Another Pass at Dungeons & Dragons (2000)

The world’s most popular table top role playing game has had a meteoric rise in the past decade, so it’s hard to imagine just how hard the 2000 attempt to adapt the property to film rolled a critical failure! To talk about the infamous flop, Sam and Case are joined by Katie DeMatteis and Ben MartinMooney from Amateurish Productions!

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Transcript

(Subject to Error)

00:00
Case Aiken
Oh, God. None of us had seen this movie when we.

00:03
Sam Alicea
Nope, yep, nope.

00:04
Case Aiken
We just knew it was a dungeons and Dragons movie.

00:07
Katie DeMatteis
We did watch it pretty immediately after, and both of us went, oh, God, how do you fix it? We just rip the whole thing up and start over.

00:18
Sam Alicea
Yeah.

00:19
Case Aiken
In a perfect world. Yes.

00:21
Sam Alicea
Yes.

00:21
Ben MartinMooney
Absolutely.

00:22
Katie DeMatteis
We do have suggestions, though. The second time through, we got a little bit more strategic with our recommendations.

00:28
Ben MartinMooney
It was a very intentional process of like, okay, we do need to come up with something that is somewhat reasonable as a way to try to fix this absolute monstrosity.

00:40
Sam Alicea
Yeah.

00:41
Ben MartinMooney
Also, no offense to anyone who happens to listen to this episode who did enjoy the movie despite all of the massive issues.

00:49
Katie DeMatteis
No, I say offense. Huge amounts offense.

00:52
Sam Alicea
If you like this movie, there is.

00:55
Katie DeMatteis
Something wrong with you.

00:56
Ben MartinMooney
I was going to say, if you can find joy in this movie, then I deeply envy your optimism for life because I couldn't. I couldn't find any redeeming qualities.

01:08
Sam Alicea
It's really kind of you. I think maybe you're really like, hey, you might be delusional, seek help, but it's fine. I like your take on it, too. That's very kind.

01:21
Ben MartinMooney
Welcome to certain POV's another pass podcast.

01:24
Case Aiken
With case and Sam, where we take.

01:26
Ben MartinMooney
Another look at movies that we find fascinating but flawed. Let's see how we could have fixed them.

01:33
Case Aiken
Hey, everyone, and welcome back to the another pass podcast. I'm case Aiken, and as always, I'm joined by my co host, Sam Alicea.

01:39
Sam Alicea
Hi, Sam.

01:40
Case Aiken
It is so great to have you on here. Clearly you rolled good initiative because I introduced you first. But we've got some guests with us today, don't we?

01:46
Sam Alicea
We do. I'm excited.

01:49
Case Aiken
So, from amateurish productions, we've got Katie di Mateus.

01:53
Katie DeMatteis
Yes. Hi.

01:53
Sam Alicea
Hello.

01:54
Katie DeMatteis
I thought you were going to introduce both of us.

01:55
Sam Alicea
It's me. I'm Katie.

01:59
Katie DeMatteis
I am a Twitch streamer. I am a writer. I am a marketer. If you are a TTrPG person, you would probably, if you were going to know me at all, know me from amateurish productions over on Twitch. Otherwise, probably wouldn't know me from marketing. So that's my intro.

02:18
Case Aiken
Yeah. And also we have America's fiance, Ben Martin Mooney.

02:21
Ben MartinMooney
My goodness, that joke has got to die at some point. Yeah. Hi, I'm Ben. I am only one person's fiance and future husband in a legal sense, but yeah, you would know me, presumably from also AP. If you do know me as America's fiance, you would know me from Brian Foster's stream and I also do tTrpg things. I write. I do video game things. I don't know. I'm not good at introducing myself. I'll be really honest.

02:58
Case Aiken
It's okay. Because no matter how much you can fail that role, the thing that we are talking about today is not just a single critical. It's not just a double critical. It's a triple critical. A failure. Today, I have gathered you all to roll initiative against the 2000 Dungeons and Dragons movie.

03:20
Ben MartinMooney
Yeah, one of the worst pieces of film. Can we call it film?

03:27
Katie DeMatteis
Okay, wait.

03:27
Case Aiken
I think technically, TSR wouldn't consider it.

03:32
Sam Alicea
It is. It is technically a film because it technically went to theaters and was shot. And there are real actors. Like, honestly, in this movie, Jeremy Irons is Jeremy Irons.

03:46
Ben MartinMooney
He's amazing.

03:47
Sam Alicea
He's outside of this for real actor. And he was impossibly a different movie than everyone else at the level of intensity that he was in.

03:56
Katie DeMatteis
Also true.

03:57
Sam Alicea
Which was giving. Like, I enjoyed it. I was like, yes, I wish that the rest of everyone else met him at the camp level he was doing, because then this film that was devoid of any joy would have had something in it.

04:11
Katie DeMatteis
I do have to give credit where credit is due. His little blue lipped henchman, who looks like he has, you know, those peel off lipsticks that you sometimes look at, like ads for, looks like he just forgot to peel them off. He also is really, given the camp and the turns and stomps away and little moody eyes, I got to give him a little bit of credit.

04:34
Sam Alicea
They were definitely in the same movie. No one else was in the movie they were in at all. Although I will say I really hated the lipstick choice because I felt like it was just lazy. Like, we're going to make him look totally different. We're just going to put blue lips on him and that's it.

04:51
Case Aiken
Well, he was also playing a sword wielding campy villain in the same year in Highlander endgame. So they had to do something to kind of distinguish the two roles. Right?

05:02
Katie DeMatteis
Course.

05:02
Sam Alicea
Of course. And that was the best they could do. I'm just saying there's just effort. Effort is not the name of the game of this film.

05:11
Case Aiken
I don't know about that because that was my assumption after I saw this movie. So, full disclosure for everyone we selected to talk about this movie with none of us having seen it, just knowing that we wanted to talk about a Dungeons and Dragons movie, hopefully for it to align roughly with the release of the next Dungeons and Dragons movie, honor among thieves. And all of our reactions when we watched. It was just, oh, no. And that was basically the text that we each sent around to each other.

05:42
Ben MartinMooney
Please make it stop.

05:44
Case Aiken
But doing some research on this movie, this was a labor of love. That honestly could have been way better. If things had just gone a little differently and the movie had gotten pushed through a couple of years earlier. It actually might have had a budget. It actually might have had a real director. It might have had real writers. It would have been a totally different thing. And instead, this was almost sort of like one of the cleanup efforts between TSR being bought out by wizards of the coast. And it was just sort of like, oh, well, fuck, we have to do this, don't we? Fuck. Okay, like kind of movie. And as a result, it is not good.

06:21
Katie DeMatteis
If I'm remembering my DNd 2000 history correctly, the producer was, a, quite young and b, forced to direct the movie as well, which was not his initial intention. He was just trying to put up the money for the production. And ended up also directing the entire thing with zero experience, from what I recall. I could be wrong, but that is pretty sure that's what happened.

06:47
Ben MartinMooney
One of the intended directors was Francis Ford. Is it Coppola? I think I say Coppola, and I just think of a. On like a tank or something. You could open it.

07:04
Katie DeMatteis
I think of Capricola. Is that what it is? The meat?

07:06
Ben MartinMooney
Capacola? But I mean, that's the guy that directed the apocalypse now.

07:17
Case Aiken
Jack.

07:20
Sam Alicea
The potential for this to be.

07:22
Ben MartinMooney
A really good movie was quite high.

07:24
Case Aiken
Oh, yeah. James Cameron was also at one point in discussion for it. Just a ridiculous list of people involved in this movie, almost. And every single one of them would have been so much better.

07:35
Katie DeMatteis
Except for Jeremy Irons, who did somehow. What do you think that they spent their entire budget on Jeremy Irons? Like, this is a genuine question.

07:44
Case Aiken
I mean, definitely the actors, because also Marlon Wayans is also in this movie. And he's a fairly big star at this point. This is right around the scary movies. So, like, I imagine he at least had a decent payout. Thor Birch was a rising star. This is right around.

08:02
Sam Alicea
Yeah.

08:03
Case Aiken
Everyone else, not so much. But I mean, maybe Justin Wayland, at this point, an exact moment in his career. Is commanding quite a bit of money from working on Lois and Clark. The new adventures of.

08:15
Sam Alicea
Sure, sure, probably not. Yeah, probably not.

08:19
Case Aiken
But certainly there are a couple of actors of renown in this movie, which is additional weird parts to it all. I'm not really worried about the actors so much as the direction and the setting for it all.

08:33
Sam Alicea
The script, the special effects. Yeah, all that other stuff. They are special. They are very special.

08:43
Katie DeMatteis
So many moments during this movie where I was like, why did that need to be CGI?

08:50
Sam Alicea
The blood. Yes. I was like, this looks so bad. It would have been better to just.

08:55
Katie DeMatteis
Pour syrup, ketchup, water down. Ketchup, anything.

08:59
Sam Alicea
Honestly, anything red Koolaid would have looked. It was so terrible. It was so bad that I was just like, oh, my God, just skip it. Don't even do the. Don't. Don't even do. Seriously, like. And the shot starts so oddly, because in order to see the blood, they zoom into Jeremy Iron's henchmen's boots, which seems totally, like, out. You're like, why are they zooming in? And then they go straight down to his feet, and then you see the blood. And I'm like, this is such a weird shot. Like, I was so distracted for half a second.

09:37
Katie DeMatteis
Creative cinematography, okay, but it looks so bad.

09:42
Case Aiken
It almost looks as bad as the opening credits to House of the dragon.

09:45
Katie DeMatteis
True.

09:50
Case Aiken
We'Re feeling punchy, starting strong.

09:54
Katie DeMatteis
But also, speaking of opening credits, very quickly, either Ben and I both missed this or they completely skipped over title cards.

10:01
Case Aiken
Yes. I also noticed I had my camera up ready to take a picture when the title card popped up, and it didn't. And I swear I've seen somewhere on the Internet an image that appeared to be the title card, but just not on the version that was streaming.

10:15
Katie DeMatteis
Ben and I both wrote that down as, like, we're like, well, here's an easy fix. Make a title card.

10:21
Ben MartinMooney
I was like, listen, are we ranking it in this day and age? If you can't instagram that you're at the movies watching the movie, then you were never, you know, first and foremost, let's fix it from the social media aspect.

10:34
Case Aiken
Yeah. Every aspect of this movie just fucked. Production, directing, screenwriting, et cetera, just fucked.

10:41
Katie DeMatteis
Can I just say the one thing I would keep in this movie and maybe elongate that goddamn maze sequence because I loved it.

10:50
Case Aiken
Yeah, actually quite good. Yeah, I mean, it was a nice moment to actually have a dungeon in a dungeons and Dragons movie, actually. It felt diegetic, and it felt like an interesting twist on what you would do. We're going to have to talk about the nature of DND as a movie because DND is a game that you can tell stories with of any kind. So we'll have to get into that. But that felt like a good spot of like, all right, this is leaning into the game aspect of dungeons and dragons.

11:19
Ben MartinMooney
Yes.

11:19
Case Aiken
I thought that was very cool. Who wouldn't love to see guts or american gladiators? Just like in a fantasy setting. In the universe of the fantasy setting.

11:28
Katie DeMatteis
I would honestly take in more puzzle traps and less of everything else.

11:37
Ben MartinMooney
I don't know. Do you want to go through the movie chronologically, or is it okay?

11:39
Case Aiken
Yeah, we can talk about major points on that one.

11:42
Ben MartinMooney
Yeah. Thoughts on that one?

11:45
Sam Alicea
Because there's just so much to talk about. We will just keep going in circles.

11:51
Case Aiken
Yes, but let's still focus on kind of the opening and talk like, how they set up their characters, because I think it's a little ass backwards. Although I have a thought about how they could make the opening scene work kind of okay, but it needs to be more of a teaser because then we get the shitty blood that goes into the river and then sets it all on fire and like, all right, well, that's an idea. That's a cool enough idea. And everyone being like, those mages are added again. Is them trying to set up this world. But I don't like the characters. And also, aside from that opening being, like, there's oppression by the mages on the commoners, which is an idea I like. There's a social justice theme going on in this. And I'm like, cool, that's good.

12:36
Case Aiken
But it's like, those damn mages. What do you got to say to everything about the mages instantly introducing us to our two terrible leads? And it's not because they couldn't pull off good leads. It's that it's just they weren't given good scripts, and then they weren't given good things to do and everything.

12:59
Sam Alicea
It gets a little weird because they do this oppression thing, and then later on, they kind of both sides it. So it kind of gets uncomfortable. It's like a good idea, except that the mage is like, hey, I have problems too, and you don't know. The empress is trying to change everything. She's good. And it's like, all right, no, stop. This feels really. Feels real weird. I don't like it.

13:29
Katie DeMatteis
I just felt like they needed. Well, there's two ways they could have taken this. I think the first direction is like, give us a little bit more. Why? Give us a little bit more exposition. Like, how did the mages get to this place? Like, are all mages evil? Is it this sort of, like, corrupt council? Which is what we see a lot of this council of Magi or whatever? Why is the princess so pro equality? Because that feels like, given her upbringing, it feels a little weird that she is just suddenly like, actually, I think we should all be happy and equal. So I feel like giving more exposition. More why? Or the other idea that I don't remember. I think I kind of came up with it and then Ben sort of ripped on it. No, because I said, no, Ben.

14:12
Katie DeMatteis
I said, it needs to be princess Bridey. That was what I said.

14:14
Ben MartinMooney
Okay, you did say Princess Bridey. Yeah, that's fair. That's fair.

14:17
Katie DeMatteis
Is to take it from the angle of a dad or like a mom telling his kids about the first DND campaign that he ever ran.

14:26
Ben MartinMooney
And I was like, make it like, hey, I'm trying to get my kids to play D and D with me. I'm going to tell you about my first campaign or one shot or whatever.

14:37
Case Aiken
I have a very similar note, actually.

14:42
Katie DeMatteis
Any of this shit that doesn't make sense, you can sort of like hand wave and be like the dwarf that makes literally, why is he there? Be like, oh, that was like my older brother who was home from college who came in stoned and wanted to play with us and we had to, whatever. That's not like the best way that you could.

14:59
Case Aiken
That was Bobby. He missed section zero.

15:02
Katie DeMatteis
You can give little reasons why all of these things just make no sense. And you can even have meta commentary of the kids being like, why? And the dad being like, look, it was my first campaign ever. I didn't know what the fuck, guys.

15:13
Ben MartinMooney
I was twelve. What do you expect from me? I've gotten better. You can sort of make it this light hearted thing where it's like, okay, so you can take your absolutely God awful script and turn it into a self referential, self aware script by just adding a little bit of meta commentary from time to be like, yeah, it's not great. I know it's not great plot development. I was twelve. I don't know how to develop characters yet. I just thought it'd be like a fun thing.

15:41
Case Aiken
I'm worried about us going too far into pitch territory.

15:46
Sam Alicea
What we're really proving is that this movie is severely lacking, right? Because we're like. And then you don't have to worry about the lack of plot or character development or explaining why some people are sitting at a table with others with food in their beard, which is disgusting. And they do several shots into that food beard, which is disgusting. Did I mention that it was disgusting and it was played for comedy, but it wasn't funny.

16:12
Ben MartinMooney
I had a specific point to address those shots. Like, oh yeah, my brother showed up drunk because he was home from college and I begged him to play d and D, and he showed back up, and then he pulls out a rotisserie chicken, which he can proceeds to eat, and then a second rotisserie chicken, which he also proceeds to eat at the table with us, which is why we have these weird shots of his character just eating chicken and nothing else. I was like, just, yeah, give us a reason. Yeah, anything to make those shots sort of funny. I don't even know if you can.

16:49
Case Aiken
Yeah, I think let's take a step further back from getting into too much of the specifics at the moment, because I think we do actually need to set up why this movie was so bad, because we talked a little bit about it. The director, everything on this movie was Courtney Solomon, who got the rights somehow, when he was 19, to make this damn movie. And then ten years later, they finally made this damn movie. And that corresponds to when TSR, which had been the original publisher for Dungeons and Dragons, was bought out by wizards of the coast. And there's a lot to be said about the mismanagement of the later years of TSR, and that goes a lot into the development hell that went into this all. And then wizards of the coast didn't really want anything to do with this movie.

17:35
Case Aiken
So they were like, no, fuck, make this movie. You. You've got basically zero money. And it was kind of like a Roger Corman kind of situation with the Fantastic Four movie, where it was just like, well, we got to do it for rights purposes. And that's why they went to an older draft of the script, because they'd been working on it for a decade at that point and had much better versions that I don't fully understand. There might be some who they want to pay out kind of situation, and there might be some just being an asshole trying to purposely bomb going on here, because that seems to be kind of part of the story. But they had to go with an earlier version of the script. They had a way more limited budget.

18:21
Case Aiken
They got a theatrical release, but it was, like, basically a tv movie. We're talking about a nothing kind of project with a first time director, with novice and cheap special effects studios. This is very much in the caliber of what you would see just a few years later for fan films.

18:38
Katie DeMatteis
Yeah.

18:39
Ben MartinMooney
Or worse.

18:40
Katie DeMatteis
Honestly, I'm sure there were some better fan films, I'm going to be honest.

18:43
Case Aiken
Yeah. So we're really seeing a movie that was very much not getting off on the right foot from any perspective on that one. And unfortunately, this also kind of goes with what they were trying to do initially, which was to do A-D-D movie that was not system or like setting specific, I should say. It's not in any of the classic, like, it's not Greyhawk, it's not the forgotten realms. They're very much trying to just be like, here's generic d D. But they didn't want to do the framing device, which also the fact that it was addressed as a thing that Solomon didn't want to have as be part of the story. I'm like, oh, well, that's also kind of a bummer. Maybe you should rethink it once the whole budget situation happened. But they wanted to do, here's just generic dnd the movie.

19:31
Case Aiken
Go enjoy. And given all the things we just talked about, you can see why you can't go generic d and D on such a micro budget with such novice is involved in here because they weren't skilled enough to set up the giant world that they're trying to set up. And then they don't have the special effects to show all the things they want to show about the giant world that they're trying to set up. And then you're just in it the whole time. There's no slow trickle out. There's no, here's our everyman being introduced into this world. It's just we're going to make generic fantasy and call it DND and have nothing that's specific to DND aside from coupled. Very specific, like the beholders and stuff like that. That's more just like Easter eggs.

20:22
Sam Alicea
Yeah.

20:22
Katie DeMatteis
What I would say, too, is that if you're going to go full just kind of fantasy calling it DND, at least use races and classes and spells that you would see. And I know at the time that this came out, I believe two e was the edition that was around or had been around, rather like when this was being.

20:44
Case Aiken
Yeah. So when this comes out, this is right at the launch of third edition.

20:48
Katie DeMatteis
Yes.

20:48
Ben MartinMooney
Okay, cool.

20:49
Katie DeMatteis
So I think it would have been based on two or 2.5 just because if it was launching with third. I don't know that. Whatever. But point being is I don't think that there was a single, I mean, arguably that weird rope thing she does could behold person, I guess. But for the most part, no one.

21:09
Ben MartinMooney
Even casts fireball for. Come on.

21:12
Sam Alicea
There's never a time where really magic other than the big scenes. This might be a CGI thing, right? This might because they wanted to use effects, but there's never a time where anyone even pretends to be silenced or there are things that you could have simply done, like low level spells that possibly didn't need you to have stuff. They didn't do any of that. There's also no real team anything. Like, one of the best things about DND is that you're a team battling things. And because we have this male protagonist that has to prove himself heart of gold, like most just generic fantasy, we don't really ever get real team building team anything which easily could have been done in the script. We get none of that. Zero. He's basically always going off on his own.

22:07
Sam Alicea
It's like every trial is like, well, now you have to go do this alone. And I'm like, really? This is boring. There's no real chance for it to have interaction or for you to even develop those other characters together. Right. One of the things that in basic fantasy that is so great is as a kid, my favorite parts of Lord of the Rings was them sitting around the campfire. Not necessarily like the battle scenes or running from ringrapes or stuff like that. It was the team getting to know each other. You don't get any of that, really, in this movie. You just have snails sexually harassing people and making terrible jokes and a little bit of this and that and a thief with a heart of gold. And. I don't know, it's just a lot. It's just a lot of not a good script.

23:01
Katie DeMatteis
Also, I have such an issue with the snail's character because it is such a racist stereotype of black people. And then to give him this sort of in servitude to. I'm literally forgetting the name of the main guy. But there are times where the main guy will throw something on the ground and tell snails to pick it up. And I'm just like, this is a problem. Even if you swapped the two main actors, it would have felt less problematic.

23:34
Ben MartinMooney
But it's still weird.

23:36
Katie DeMatteis
Still weird. Still a problem. Still weird. But especially to make him like this bumbling black best friend who all he wants to do is hit on women and is kind of not very intelligent. And I was just like, this is a problem.

23:51
Sam Alicea
And listen, snails gets the rough end of the stick, even though he is a terrible character. They did him dirty. Like, the way that he dies when he dies in the film. All of that stuff is really terrible. And that thing at the end doesn't redeem all the things they did to poor snails throughout the course of the film.

24:13
Katie DeMatteis
No, it really.

24:14
Case Aiken
And also, we should pause and note what thing, because I still don't fully understand what happened.

24:19
Sam Alicea
Philosopher Stone, can he resurrect people? Is he actually a necromancer? What is he? What is our main character? What is his class?

24:28
Ben MartinMooney
Also, apparently they had less of a budget as a party to build some kind of memorial to him than the film had for his special effect.

24:35
Katie DeMatteis
That gravestone was so pathetic.

24:38
Ben MartinMooney
Like, hey, we stacked a couple of rocks. Love you, snail.

24:41
Case Aiken
Well, not only that, but then they have in the background, like, stock crowd sounds. So it's like, oh, we got to go get back to this thing.

24:47
Sam Alicea
It's like, wait, are you going to be knighted? He's going to be knighted at the end of the movie for everything that he's done. And poor snails only gets some rocks. Like, are you serious? He gave up his life in service to end this war. Like, he is the person that made the biggest sacrifice out of all the people standing there. And you're like, well, budy, you're just outside of city limits and we're just going to pile these rocks on each other and we carved your name, snails. No inscription, by the way, about what you did or who you are into this rock. And you did real good, buddy. You did real good. I'm going to go get my reward, buddy.

25:29
Case Aiken
It could have actually been worse, and it was almost worse because initially they wanted snails to be a half orc, but still, like this racist caricature.

25:39
Ben MartinMooney
I didn't know that.

25:41
Case Aiken
I know. It's just, listen.

25:45
Sam Alicea
Justice for snails. Like, he's not a great character, but honestly, his treatment was terrible. Someone needs to come to justice for that whole character.

25:58
Katie DeMatteis
Agreed.

25:59
Case Aiken
Sam, I think you bring up one of my key points in talking about dungeons and dragons and how you would convert it into a movie versus what just generic fantasy is, because you brought up the exact part, which is that it's not about just like a one protagonist situation. That's not DND. DND is about a group of people, and that means that you actually have, by default, it has to be an ensemble cast and not just one where you have a hero and a supporting cast. We needed this to be more Lord of the Rings and less the Hobbit.

26:32
Ben MartinMooney
Yes, that's a great analogy.

26:35
Case Aiken
And that's kind of what we're getting with this movie, where we have our central generic white male lead, but everyone else completely functions in the service of his arc to the point that, as you point out, there's all these adventures that he has to go on and everyone else is just an observer, which is insane. We all like the dungeon guts obstacle course thing. Why isn't it all four of them?

27:02
Katie DeMatteis
One of the notes we had was, like, put them all on the fucking.

27:05
Ben MartinMooney
Dungeon and make it longer understand. Give each one of them a moment to shine and show their skills and whatever in the way that hopefully you would have an opportunity to do in a dungeon when you're playing actual dNd, right? Like, giving everybody a chance to be like, oh, yeah, this is my skill set. I can do this. Makes a, for a better dungeon crawl, if that's what you're doing. And b, makes the game more enjoyable, which, in turn, would have also made the movie more enjoyable. Because we want to see that, right? We want to see the mage do her thing. We want to see snails.

27:37
Katie DeMatteis
What snails is, I don't know.

27:40
Ben MartinMooney
That's also part of. It's like the dwarf gets angry if you knock his hat off. And snails.

27:46
Sam Alicea
Yeah, snails. Tries to convince you to run away and steal another day. That's his phrase. But you can even have that scene just be snails and him. Since they are the thieves. The rogue class. They don't really specify classes, but let's say they're there. There are thieves, right? That's their thing. And you can have that moment. But especially at the end, there's never any time where there's actual battles. Even when he goes in to get the artifact that they need to basically defeat it and win this war and make sure that Jeremy irons is not going to win with his crazy eyes, which are amazing. He still goes by himself. He still goes by himself. And the mage doesn't even get to heal anyone. That could have been easy. She could have placed her hand on someone and then they could have gotten better.

28:48
Sam Alicea
Like, come on. There's so many things.

28:51
Katie DeMatteis
Or, like, I didn't understand when they went in to go save the mage. I love how I know no one's named but snails when they go in to save the mage.

28:59
Sam Alicea
Worst character. Only name the real justice for snail. Everyone knows his name.

29:08
Katie DeMatteis
Yeah. So the ranger and the dwarf are, like, outside waiting, and the dwarf kind of, like, looks at the ranger and is like, why are we out here? And she's like, they have to do this alone. And I'm like, why do they have to do this? There is no reason whatsoever why this incredibly talented tracker, who is, like, the creme de la creme, cannot go in and help them do it alone. Why? Give me a reason.

29:38
Sam Alicea
Please.

29:39
Katie DeMatteis
I'm begging you.

29:40
Case Aiken
Yeah. It's so weird. And it's also this weird aspect. So I have this note and I actually came to answer by the time I'd finished writing the note out, which is like, why is every DND movie about a group of thieves? Why is that the go to for every DND structure as opposed to any other class? And the realization was like, oh, well, it's the tradition of the hobit and Lord of the Rings where the hobbits are the thieves of the party. And it's always from their perspective. But there are so many movies out there that we say are just like DND. Like, you look at your Star wars movies, for example, where it's like, oh yeah, I can see the party form right there. And it's not about the thief. You don't have to have every story be about that.

30:21
Case Aiken
But if it is going to be about that, do a proper heist movie and then you can have justifications for your party being together. And they're a part of a team that's trying to steal shit. And don't try to muddy the water by having it be a chosen one. Dashing knights story. And also the thief story. No, have Justin Winnheim's character, which is his name is Ridley Freeborn, be a fucking thief. Like, be a proper thief or a bard because he's dressed like a bard from a movie, which would have also been fine.

30:51
Sam Alicea
Which, by the way, his last jacket at Snail's grave. That was a killer jacket. Go on.

30:57
Case Aiken
That was a good look.

30:59
Sam Alicea
I was actually like, oh, a good look. And I was like, that's the one positive thing you have to say, Sam. Wow.

31:05
Ben MartinMooney
So here's the thing. As far as having him sort of like be a bard or whatever, I think that the reason that they weren't able to do that is a better bard rogue movie came out in 2000, which was the road to El Dorado. So they couldn't hijack that because it was already taken and they did a much better job. And I will die on this hill, so don't hat me Twitter if you're.

31:27
Case Aiken
Yeah, I mean, also the two e bard is like kind of whatever in terms of what we ultimately get to. The bard fluctuates so much in terms of the usability in the game.

31:36
Ben MartinMooney
Absolute fact.

31:37
Sam Alicea
Fair enough. But it could have been the bard's moment. Let's just say this movie didn't really.

31:41
Katie DeMatteis
Follow a lot of rules.

31:42
Sam Alicea
So I'm just saying that's true.

31:45
Case Aiken
What's scary is us saying the bard, or like, he could be a bard and yada, yada it does actually feel very much like we're talking about the new one that's coming out, which is definitely not trying to do anything like this movie. It's not trying to be this movie, but better. It's just trying to be its own movie, but it's still falling into the same archetypes and we're still talking about it in the same way.

32:04
Katie DeMatteis
Well, I mean, I think the problem is that this movie didn't do DNd at all. So you couldn't really do this movie but better and make it a DND movie because it's just not like fundamentally it's missing the core elements that make DND.

32:24
Sam Alicea
Yeah, that's true. It did have dragons and it did have dungeons.

32:28
Katie DeMatteis
It did have dragons.

32:29
Ben MartinMooney
It starts strong with a dungeon in a dragon, or a dragon in a.

32:31
Katie DeMatteis
Dungeon in a dragon. But also that dragon was so easy to kill. Did anyone else write that down?

32:37
Case Aiken
Because I was like, yeah.

32:42
Sam Alicea
Very heavy, very solid.

32:43
Case Aiken
When we get into pictures, I have a thought about how to make that scene work way better and also just be just more fun for everyone. But this whole movie is not referential to the thing. It's coming from the DND stuff, but it's also just could be more referential for fun ways. Anyway, how cool would it be if they had a system where they talked about spells, as in like vancian magic with spell slots? Because that's a unique thing. I know DND didn't invent it. I know that it comes from specific fantasy where it's like you can memorize the spell and it goes away. Stuff that I don't remember because I just remember reading that DND pulled it from a fantasy series.

33:15
Case Aiken
But most fantasy at this point adopts like a mana or a personal reserve of strength, or we have to kill a person by draining their life to do the spell thing. And how much more interesting would it be if there was some kind of system in play where they were aware that everyone had spells, like spell slots, but maybe some sort of meter for the mages to be able to tell, or like jewelry that glowed or something like that to indicate it? Something that you could have a thing that is so inherently tied to DND and specifically DND and games that are like it and this like one lineage instead of just generic fantasy play into those kind of elements.

33:55
Case Aiken
Again, that's one of the reasons I like the maze, because that feels like a dungeon that you're being put in as part of a module in a game. I think that's a cool element there. Lean into that. Lean into other classes. I don't want it to be necessarily to the degree that an Ra salvatore book where it's just like, but you're a ranger, but you, thief, are going the way that the first drisk book is like, every character is just, yes, well, but he's a fighter over, you know, put one or two, have a holy knight or a cleric. Do the things that are really distinct and iconic to D. D specifically.

34:32
Sam Alicea
I mean, honestly, just give me tell something a little more like just a tiny bit more magic. Give me some characters don't just put random blue guys with eyeballs in their head. There are so many. They're already species. Is that the new term they're using? I have a problem with that too. They're already like races and things like that in DND. What are we doing? You bought the rights. Use what you got.

35:02
Katie DeMatteis
Yeah, there were so many easy swaps too. Like that weird thing that gets put into that guy's head. Make it look like an intellect of our. Or something like that. Give it any sort of already extant dnd monster that does something to your brain. Make it look like that. It's like so many just like easy swaps out that wouldn't have even taken like extra CGI or taken more to the plot. Just change the things that are already there. Like, change the spells that are already being cast to something that has a similar effect. Because almost everything they cast has some kind of close equivalent because it's all generic magic.

35:41
Case Aiken
Every stuff has been done in DND at this point.

35:44
Ben MartinMooney
You could even go so far as to just reference. Be like, do you want me to use fireball? And then be like, no, don't do that. We're walking to a small. You don't have to CG. If your issue is that our CGI.

35:57
Katie DeMatteis
Budget is $12 and all we can.

35:59
Sam Alicea
Do is brown dragons. The dirtiest brown dragons we can.

36:03
Ben MartinMooney
It was so bad. Then just reference an iconic spell. Eldritch blast. Come on. Is there anything more d d than fireball or eldritch blast?

36:14
Case Aiken
Maybe like at this point, this is pretty the introduction of the warlock period. But fireball is like super distinct magic missile.

36:24
Ben MartinMooney
Magic missile also.

36:26
Case Aiken
And magic missile, I have to imagine is very easy because I could come up with a way in premiere right now just to do a magic missile without.

36:33
Ben MartinMooney
Do it with some paper machete and fishing line.

36:39
Case Aiken
Yeah, you could do just like some sparklers or something that goes across or something very easy.

36:44
Sam Alicea
You could have added humor by having her shout magic missile. And for it to not happen and snails go, is something supposed to happen? Because that would have actually been a funny line.

36:53
Ben MartinMooney
That would have been great.

36:54
Case Aiken
I used up all my spell slots.

36:55
Katie DeMatteis
Yeah, there you go.

36:57
Case Aiken
And again, getting back to the vansian thing. Also the fact that they traditionally had to prepare each spell individually. So that it's like, no, I already cast that spell today. I can't cast it again. Would be a really good moment there just to be like, yep, this is A-D-D thing that we're dealing with right now.

37:11
Sam Alicea
Yeah. I mean, honestly, for me, these would all be wonderful. But I don't even know if I needed to be that specific. I needed just any direction. I don't even think that the characters knew what they were playing. I don't think that our protagonist knows where he sits in the world of D and D. Like, who is he? What is he? He clearly has some sort of magic, but he's not a mage. And he is a thief. But he's got a heart of gold. Right? Does he have a secret lineage? Does he know who he is? I just need to know that the actors know what class they are playing.

37:58
Katie DeMatteis
They did.

37:59
Sam Alicea
Exactly. That's my biggest problem. We're getting technical here, and that's great, but we don't even need to get technical. My biggest problem is that even on the most basic level. Even on the most basic level, I don't know their role in this movie. In this. Well, no, I only know Snail's name. But I know that this is, like, the hero and this is the love interest. And here's the person that snails falls in love with but hates him. And I know that's who they are in terms of the script. But what are they really? Right? Do they know related to D-D-I don't think they do. And that's a problem.

38:40
Case Aiken
I got one. So for a movie that actually, the plot hinges very dramatically on the different types of dragons that are out there in the world. They don't do a very good job of explaining that there are different types of dragons or doing anything with that. Because it's like, oh, I have a scepter that controls gold dragons explicitly. And then there's another scepter that controls red dragons specifically. And at no point do they stop to be like, oh, there's a shitload of different types of dragons in the world. And that's a big important thing in this setting for whatever reason. And that's why there's magic like this. Or even just being like, of all the different flights of dragons. You command the gold or something. Because I understood when it was like, oh, it's the thing that allows you to control red dragons.

39:21
Case Aiken
It's like, oh, they're actually focusing on it, but they don't really, they don't tell you about this.

39:26
Ben MartinMooney
They give you that snippet and then they're like, cool. So now you've got that exposition, you can kind of go from there on your own, and we'll just mosey on to the next bit of plot, if you want to call it that something.

39:38
Sam Alicea
I mean, there's just so much mess. I mean, at some point, I was just, wait, why? Oh, right, the dragons. Because by the time we got back to Jeremy Irons, to the empress, who comes in and out, honestly, it's just like, what is this? What is this part of, why are you here? What purpose do you actually serve?

40:02
Ben MartinMooney
Do you even go here?

40:03
Sam Alicea
Yeah, exactly. It gets so muddled and lost by the time you get to the end of the. I was just like, oh, right, the artifact is for the dress. I forgot why they were going to find it.

40:22
Katie DeMatteis
Someone remind me, did the empress dismantle monarchy or just say she was going to rule better?

40:29
Ben MartinMooney
I don't remember.

40:29
Sam Alicea
You know what? I don't know if they were actually clear about that. She said that the mages weren't going to be able to bully the commoners and that commoners and mages, she was going to dismantle basically the equivalent of their congress or parliament. That doesn't make things.

40:48
Ben MartinMooney
Removing the checks and balances of the governing system.

40:53
Case Aiken
Or is she advancing the House of Commons in this situation? Like, the House of Lords have been set up pretty well, and it's like, now we're going to give some more power.

41:01
Sam Alicea
That's not what it felt like. It felt like she was disbanding the council because they were crooked and she was not. I feel like this is a lead up to a second movie where she actually is a fascist taking over, and she lied to everyone.

41:18
Katie DeMatteis
The wealth discrepancy between the nobles and the commoners, because the reason they're commoners is because they don't have any money, which is being hoarded by the elites. And I just feel like we didn't deal with any of that.

41:28
Sam Alicea
No, we didn't. And there was not really anything. And it wasn't even just, like, the elite. It was specifically mages. It was specifically mages. I was like, so is the currency magic?

41:42
Ben MartinMooney
It definitely feels like that.

41:44
Katie DeMatteis
But don't they buy things with gold.

41:46
Sam Alicea
Exactly. It doesn't make sense. Yeah. Can bully you. They can tie you up when you don't want to be tied up and then take your gold.

41:57
Ben MartinMooney
Or when you do want to make.

41:59
Sam Alicea
I'm throwing all these questions out because I feel like case may or may not have theory. He always has some weird fact.

42:07
Case Aiken
I mean, I will say that this all goes along better with the whole. This is the script I wrote early rather well. It goes in the real world with the script that he wrote when he was 19. All here. But also it goes really well with like, oh, the DM was twelve when he came up with this campaign.

42:20
Sam Alicea
Yeah.

42:21
Case Aiken
Scenario. Because, sorry to go lefty for a moment here, but I know I'm in good company. This is very much like a liberal concept of progress where it's like, okay, everyone should be equal, but we don't want to give up anything. There's this feeling of white guilt, but at the same time not actually being willing to take any of the steps to make the world better.

42:48
Sam Alicea
And he's just joining the ruling class because he's going to be knighted after he does all of that stuff. He's like, well, sorry, snails. Got to go get knighted. Have funny poor bitches grave because that's what I got you.

43:03
Case Aiken
But it's okay because he cried really dramatically when snails died.

43:07
Katie DeMatteis
That's true. That is true.

43:09
Sam Alicea
Put that 1 st that honestly probably could have been spent better anywhere else. Yeah, just saying.

43:17
Case Aiken
I will say by that point in the movie, they clearly have no budget. The shot itself, it's just like a random park that they're in. There's nothing to make it look like it's a medieval setting. It doesn't look like they're near a crowd of people. That's why it's just like awkward, like stock audio in the background. It's like to hear that in the distance. I got a ceremony over that way. I'm going to go there. But they're not close. They're not even at like a renfair or something. It looks like they had no money. And we're like, fuck. Well, we got some rocks. We could paint one of the rocks.

43:52
Sam Alicea
Yeah.

43:52
Katie DeMatteis
I feel like the whole thing very much to that point of sort of like white liberalism. It's very. Or twelve year old child making a story. Both work. It's very black versus white in the sense of good versus bad. And it's like, ooh, evil mages. Ooh, good party. I don't even want to call them a party because they weren't really a party or good for goodness's sake and evil for evilness sake. And there's no gray area which works fine if it's a D and D campaign that a twelve year old is putting on, because that tracks right. Sort of like, I expect the bad people to be bad and the good people to be good. Whatever, fine.

44:35
Sam Alicea
Well.

44:35
Case Aiken
And the players can fill out, meaning. That's the other thing. Some of these stories work well in DND specifically because the players can have their head cannon for everything. They can elaborate on the relationships and all that, because it's a big collaborative thing as opposed to a singular. This movie is less politically nuanced than Phantom Menace.

44:58
Sam Alicea
You're not wrong about Phantom Menace. When I was watching this film, especially, like, the scenes with the council where Jeremy Irons is basically convincing everyone that the empress is wrong. And I was like, this feels a lot like Palpatine, and it feels a lot like that moment in the senate. This feels exactly the same. This is the same moment and it's going to lead nowhere. And I was right.

45:25
Katie DeMatteis
We have a note somewhere about them ripping off Star Wars. I don't remember exactly what it was in reference to, but I mean, the.

45:32
Ben MartinMooney
Note that I remember about Star wars is like, y'all's animation was worse than Star wars, which came out many years before this. While we're in the process of talking about this, I do want to call out the one thing that I would not change at all, which is Jeremy Burnett did a bang up job with the music for this movie.

45:55
Katie DeMatteis
The music was actually really good.

45:58
Ben MartinMooney
I genuinely enjoyed it. And I know that there are lots of people who have critiqued it, saying that it was, like, intrusive and too much. But I genuinely enjoyed the music and I thought that he did a very good job with the score of the rings.

46:10
Sam Alicea
I think why it's intrusive is because the score has joy and humor and the movie itself, this movie is devoid of that.

46:24
Katie DeMatteis
But, like, the opening sequence, I was like, oh, this is kind of like. It's giving the sense terrible. But it makes me think of this movie theater in Boston where they used to play just generic movie theater sounds like songs in the bathroom. And I was like, this is the kind of song they would have played in that bathroom. It gives me that feel good. Just basic Hollywood sounding vibes.

46:48
Case Aiken
Yeah, it's doing the job that the movie was kind of overall trying to do, but actually doing it capably.

46:55
Sam Alicea
It's doing heavy lifting and the movie is not meeting it where it's taking.

47:01
Ben MartinMooney
It actively running in the other direction.

47:05
Sam Alicea
The movie is drowning it. It is a rock. Pulling the music down.

47:10
Katie DeMatteis
It's all three of snails'rocks. On his grave. Just pulling.

47:16
Sam Alicea
It's for snails.

47:19
Ben MartinMooney
Jfs.

47:20
Case Aiken
Jfs.

47:24
Sam Alicea
I hope that's not the catchphrase of this episode. I'm sorry. He is a terrible character. Please do not believe people listening to this. If you are brave enough after listening to this episode to actually tune in and watch this film, do not believe that I am defending snails. He is awful. He is a bad person. But he does give his life, he does sacrifice himself, and he does love.

47:51
Katie DeMatteis
His friend, but at the same time.

47:53
Ben MartinMooney
He is a serial harasser.

47:55
Katie DeMatteis
Absolutely. And caricature.

47:57
Ben MartinMooney
Yes.

47:58
Katie DeMatteis
And a problem also was not lost on me that they paired up the two singular, or I guess, dual black people in this movie. Romantically. They paired them up also. They put the ranger in plate, which I know is like a very small thing, but just did need to call.

48:15
Ben MartinMooney
That out because with nipples.

48:18
Case Aiken
With nipples, I'm less concerned about the chest plate than how the chest plate looks.

48:22
Sam Alicea
She also has a very defined abdomen area with a belly button. I was just like, really a v shape and leading to a belly button. Come on, y'all.

48:34
Katie DeMatteis
Yeah, it was a choice. Also, the costumes, I do want to understand because some of the costumes were interesting and the others were just like, did you walk into a goodwill and go, this works, and then go to school?

48:47
Case Aiken
I said out loud that the top that the mage girl is wearing, and I'm not going to look her name up right now, the top that she's wearing throughout of it. You could have bought it hot Topic in 1999.

48:55
Ben MartinMooney
Oh, my God.

48:56
Case Aiken
Yes.

48:56
Ben MartinMooney
Honestly, that's probably what they did. I think so, like, genuinely.

49:01
Case Aiken
Yeah. There's a couple of costumes where it's like, okay, you rented this from a costume shop. And then there are others where it's just like, okay, well, this looks velvety ish and is good for a maid character, where here are extremely.

49:15
Sam Alicea
Which I think makes the chest plate that much more egregious because they literally went out and rented that or found it or had it made, and that was, like, the one thing that they spent money on. And that is horrible.

49:30
Katie DeMatteis
Bad.

49:31
Case Aiken
Well, and then it's lit horribly in most of the shots. Like, the first time you get a full look at it shimmers. And it's not like sting where it glows and orcs are around kind of shimmer. It's just. It's overexposed. Because this whole movie, the light balance is just, like, way off all the time. Not even getting into color correction to try to have it. Not just, like, scene to scene or camera angle to camera angle. Just, like, hits you with, like, oh, the palette is totally different now. Every time they're outside, it's overexposed again. The production values are like people who just have never done this before. And I'm not saying that I know how to do it a lot better.

50:08
Case Aiken
I'm just saying that I know what it looks like when someone doesn't know what they're doing because I do that all the time.

50:14
Katie DeMatteis
Also, from a plot perspective, which I know there is not much of in this movie, but from a plot perspective, what is the point of the ranger? Because to me, it feels like she shows up and kind of helps them, but then doesn't really help them at all because every time they have to go do something, she's like, I'll be waiting here. And it's like, okay, yeah, it's really weird.

50:39
Sam Alicea
At one point, it seems like she may be the head of the empress's army or someone that the empress sends to find them and find the scroll. So she's put on this mission. So you could say, like, oh, maybe she's the empress spy, which would have been really cool, but that never really. She reports back to the empress, but she doesn't really go back the next time. And you never see any handoff to any kind of bird or squirrel or anything. Like, nothing. There's nothing that says that she's communicating other than that. And then she just follows them around and it's just like, go on. She's just there with sage advice, which, by the way, kind of also not a good look because she's also black. And it's kind of like, know. And that's not cool either. Like, not a good look.

51:37
Sam Alicea
Dungeons and dragons.

51:39
Case Aiken
Yeah, like, I'll say who she is, which is that she is the DMpc. She is like an NPC introduced by the DM. Once they realized that the party was not going to go anywhere near where.

51:48
Ben MartinMooney
They needed to go and they needed.

51:49
Case Aiken
To railroad the plot. That is what the character is, but it's not what it should have been.

51:57
Ben MartinMooney
We had a conversation watching it the second time. We're like, okay, so which of these characters are pcs and which are npcs versus dmpcs? And that one specifically, I was like, that's an NPC. That one is there specifically so that the Dungeon master can be like, hey, you bunch of deranged cats, please go this direction. Here is the exact information you need to know to go to the exact place that I need you to go to continue the plotline.

52:25
Case Aiken
Yeah. How is the empress aware of these things? Oh, well, this character is there exclusively to transfer information back and forth between the two and then to say, oh, this must be a journey only he takes.

52:38
Katie DeMatteis
And then on top of it, when they get ambushed, after they get out of the cave, the master tracker couldn't sense an ambush coming.

52:47
Ben MartinMooney
Couldn't hear anybody.

52:48
Katie DeMatteis
What is she there for if not to be sneaky and make sure that they're safe?

52:53
Sam Alicea
Couldn't use those elven ears for nothing.

52:56
Ben MartinMooney
Honestly. Apparently, I think that the nipples on the armor were too loud and she just couldn't hear anything over just the.

53:04
Sam Alicea
Gleaming shine from the moon.

53:07
Ben MartinMooney
My earballs are blinded.

53:09
Case Aiken
Yeah, it got cold and all of a sudden there's just pinging.

53:15
Ben MartinMooney
Yeah. And that's how they were able to.

53:17
Katie DeMatteis
Mark a little volleyball that goes between.

53:19
Ben MartinMooney
The playing pong between her armor nipples.

53:23
Sam Alicea
Or she was just disgusted. The dwarf started eating chicken again, and there was just so much chicken in his beer.

53:29
Case Aiken
Well, I have some thoughts about how you can make the elf chick again, none of these names matter because this movie is generic to generic. The only name that stands out is snails. Because why is his name fucking Snail?

53:42
Sam Alicea
Well, and also, it's the one name that you see written, right? So at the very end of the movie, it's the last name you see written and then it disappears and his friend is waiting for him. And we know this because the black elf tells him, again, not a good look. He's not even the mage. She's not even the magic person.

54:03
Ben MartinMooney
Can I say, the impression that I got from the movie was that the reason he is called snails is because he is slow.

54:11
Case Aiken
Sure.

54:14
Ben MartinMooney
Based on the writing, that is what I got. I was like, okay, what's the most obvious thing? Oh, he's slow. Which just adds to the reprehensible treatment of black characters in this movie, which is just like, yeah, we're going to give him the name that represents his mental acuity deficiency. You couldn't do any.

54:37
Case Aiken
Yeah, because if you try to describe anything about the character, it just sounds like you're rattling off like, racist tropes. Because he's cowardly, he's lazy, he's slow, he's not very bright.

54:47
Sam Alicea
He's cheap, and he hits on everyone.

54:50
Case Aiken
Yeah, and he's womanizer. It's terrible.

54:54
Katie DeMatteis
It is so bad.

54:55
Ben MartinMooney
It's really bad.

54:56
Case Aiken
Incredibly bad.

54:56
Katie DeMatteis
When I say justice for snails, I mean justice for the writing of that character.

55:01
Case Aiken
Right.

55:02
Sam Alicea
And honestly, it should happen. I mean, honestly, snails should have never happened. He should have been a much better.

55:08
Case Aiken
Yeah. Like, it's such a weird moment, too, because it's right around scary movie. Yes. So Marlon Wayans is know long after South Central will drink your juice in the. So, like, having that kind of a parody type character. There is also one thing, but also requiem for a dream, same.

55:28
Sam Alicea
Like, I'm sure he stayed in because, I mean, paycheck, but also, like, Jeremy Irons is in this movie. Like, the voice of Scar is in this movie. Jeremy, you think to yourself, like, I'm going to be in a movie with Jeremy Irons. That's awesome. Oh, it's a fun thing. Oh, I'm bringing the jokes, and then you're there and you're like, well, I guess I'm just going to stay here because I'm getting paid and I'm going to finish it so that I don't get marked as. But, like, honestly, this is not something I think he wants people to remember. And I guess I'm sorry to him that we brought it.

56:03
Ben MartinMooney
Well, there's. There's a little trivia fact on IMDb that when asked why he did the film, Jeremy Irons was like, are you kidding? I just bought a castle. I had to pay for it somehow. And I feel like that level of like, yeah, I had bills to pay really speaks to why anyone did this movie was like, yeah, I needed the money.

56:20
Katie DeMatteis
Also, you know, actors, a lot of actors can't turn down jobs, even if they're terrible. A job in a shitty movie is better, especially if it's going to theaters is still better. Well, arguably, I don't know how this affected anyone's careers. I know that the guy who produced and directed it didn't do anything for like six to ten years after that. So probably has some kind of positive impact, but also maybe not.

56:45
Case Aiken
Yeah, I mean, this is why I'm not too upset about any of the actors, even Marlon Wayans, who is doing he's fine a thing. But I have to imagine that he was told to do that thing. It doesn't make sense, but it's fine. But it's. The whole production itself was cursed from the beginning because wizards of the coast didn't care. TSR already was kind of trying to shoot it down anyway, way back early. I shouldn't say this makes it sound.

57:15
Katie DeMatteis
Like way back in the day, but.

57:18
Case Aiken
In the 80s, they had tried to do a lot of like, they had tried to license the Dungeon and Dragons brand and had some traction prior to the satanic panic, like, picking up, and then all of a sudden it becoming a poison pill. So I understand that there was some desire in the past, but that was Gary Giygax's thing. And by this point, he had been pushed out of TSR. So I have to imagine that multimedia stuff was not really on their priority. And then when wizards of the coast bought it, they really didn't want to be involved in any sort of crazy deals that had been made to some fucking 19 year old a decade ago. It's a movie that no one wanted to have made. And the fact that it occurred is kind of amazing.

57:52
Case Aiken
There are moments where I look at the story and I'm like, oh, yeah, this shouldn't exist, period. And wouldn't it be great if it was better? But I'm curious what we're all going to say in terms of how you make this movie better, because this might be the steepest slope that we have ever come up across on this show.

58:12
Ben MartinMooney
Yeah, I feel like if we want to start down that route, I feel like the easiest way to make this movie better is to never fucking make the movie in the first place. Let's just not do it. Just don't make it at home with your friends. Shoot it one of those 15 pound shoulder mounted VCR cameras. You're going to get a better shot anyways. And then put it in a box, bury it, and never dig it back up. And that is how you make this movie better. Thanks for listening to the episode. Let's run some ads and we'll call.

58:49
Case Aiken
Yeah, when we'll come back, we'll have nothing but the. No, we'll actually take a serious swing at this when we get back. But in the meantime, ad video games are a unique medium. They can tell stories, immerse us in strange, fantastic worlds, blur the very boundaries of our reality. But at the end of the day, video games are fun. Whatever fun is to you.

59:13
Ben MartinMooney
I'm Jeff Moonan.

59:14
Case Aiken
And I am Matt, aka Stormageddon. And on fun and games, we talk about the history, trends, and community of video games. It's a celebration of all the games we play and all the fun we find within them.

59:26
Ben MartinMooney
And there's so many more games out there, so we hope you'll share in.

59:29
Case Aiken
That conversation with us. Fun and games podcast with Matt and Jeff. Find us on certainpov.com or wherever you get your podcasts and happy gaming. And we're back. All right, so let's fucking figure out how we could work on this movie and make it.

59:45
Sam Alicea
I mean, here's the thing.

59:46
Case Aiken
Viable project.

59:48
Sam Alicea
This is like D and d right now, okay? We have to class up. We have to get together. We have to come together, like a fellowship and fix this fucking movie.

01:00:00
Katie DeMatteis
I just think the idea of having, like, a princess bride type situation can fix so many pieces that don't make sense. It's, like, just be self referential. Understand the shortcomings, make jokes about them. You could almost have the exact same movie, and with the right commentary around it wouldn't be good, but it would be.

01:00:28
Case Aiken
I mean, I think we all had that same basic idea, and like I said, the producer, director, whatever, Courtney didn't want to do that at the beginning point of this all, because I think it was an idea that a lot of people had for it. So I do understand where you would want to dismiss that, because at this point, what's the closest we've had to a real dungeon and dragon movie prior to this? Mazes and monsters. The Tom Hanks thing, where he becomes obsessed with the satanic panic view of dungeons and. Yeah, yeah. So there's that, and then there's, like, some animated stuff.

01:01:00
Case Aiken
So I get, you know, I think we all agree that if it was using that framing device, it could either be very cool way to tell a story in retrospect, the princess Bride style, where it's like, telling it to a kid or explaining a game could all be very cool. You could do it where there's a bigger story going on outside of that with all the real people. But I think that's definitely not the movie they wanted to make here. Although I think that would be a really cool movie if you had a love story about two characters who met by playing DND and then fell in love in the real world.

01:01:31
Katie DeMatteis
We literally talked about that. It's in our notes.

01:01:37
Case Aiken
I feel like that would be really cool. Or you could do something where they're sucked in to it, which I think was the deal with the cartoon. And I know there have been book series like that. Like, critical failure is one that I read a couple of years back, but a lot of people have had the idea of, like, well, what if the players are sucked into it all? And then it could be, like, very never ending story style, where you've got it could be the empress summons, champions to her, and the players are all like, what the fuck? We're just all of a sudden in this world would at least be an interesting way to sort of explain some of it.

01:02:05
Katie DeMatteis
And you could do like Jumanji esque, right?

01:02:08
Case Aiken
Yeah. You could do weird styles for everything. You could lean into the bad special effects because they're inside the game world. And you can either stylize them more so they look like cartoony kind of things, or just be. Just lean into it. But I think that would work really well. I'm curious if that was actually in the cards.

01:02:34
Sam Alicea
Allowed to go first.

01:02:35
Case Aiken
That's what I'm saying. Why don't we get a little more granular into this? Because I think that framing structure we're all in agreement on, that would be the best way to do it because it addresses the budget issue. Because it could be like, I cast fireball, you don't have the spells, like, cut back to the real world. You don't have the spell slots. I don't cast fireball. And then that way you don't have to deal with the special effect.

01:02:53
Sam Alicea
Yeah. I'm also okay without doing the framing device. However, I do think it would work, but I'm okay with working through the confines of not adding that in.

01:03:08
Case Aiken
Yeah, that's kind of what I think we have to at least take a crack at. How could you make it work if they really wanted it just to be like, this is A-D-D movie, but we're not going to acknowledge the game parts. Like the mechanics parts.

01:03:22
Ben MartinMooney
Cool.

01:03:23
Case Aiken
So on that note, what Sam was alluding to is that I am not allowed to go before Sam. That's against the rules of our game. Well, it's not our one big rule, because the other big rule is like, it has to be theoretically right, but.

01:03:35
Sam Alicea
There'S two big rules.

01:03:37
Case Aiken
But Ben and Katie, you are our guest. Would you like Sam to go first or would one of you or the collaborative of you because you have so many notes. I love the documents.

01:03:46
Katie DeMatteis
Do we want to run through our notes? And Sam, if you want to add any color, you can feel free to.

01:03:52
Sam Alicea
Absolutely. And case is allowed to add color. He's allowed to collaborate. He's just not allowed to give all of his notes before me.

01:03:59
Case Aiken
Because, like, the second episode with her as co host, I, like, had a full outline for the movie.

01:04:05
Sam Alicea
And I was like, and I would have put more Tim Curry in it. Like, that was my.

01:04:12
Ben MartinMooney
Okay, but when in doubt, yes, more Tim Curry. Honestly, you could fix this movie by adding Tim Curry. I don't know how.

01:04:20
Sam Alicea
Yeah, definitely. He could have been the.

01:04:25
Ben MartinMooney
Dragon. Honestly, that does improve the movie for me significantly. I'll be honest?

01:04:30
Sam Alicea
Yeah, it does.

01:04:34
Katie DeMatteis
Okay. So I think that we have hit on a good chunk of our notes, specifically, like, my biggest one being that you either need to commit to going, like a lord of the Rings, like, complex character route and really building out the motivations and the backstories and all that sort of thing so that it feels very real or you have to go campy. And I feel like we got stuck right in between the two, as opposed. It was kind of like pick a lane, and they couldn't quite figure out which lane they wanted to pick, so they kept swerving back and forth. And I do think that sort of, like you said, there is a way to go campy and be self referential without doing the kind of third person narrative perspective. There's definitely other avenues you could have taken.

01:05:19
Katie DeMatteis
I think that was just the easiest for us to kind of conceive while not changing too much about the film itself. But I think that the biggest thing is deciding just off the jump, what tone are you going to be taking and then committing to it. And if you're going to go with a more serious, sort of intense, emotional whatever, then you need to spend some time fleshing the world and the characters out.

01:05:47
Ben MartinMooney
You got to give us a reason to. Yeah, because at this point, you can go through the whole movie. I mean, I think in the sense that this movie is incredibly forgettable. There is no reason for us to care at any point. I don't know why Jeremy Iron's character thinks that leadership is rightfully his. You have an empress, you've had a royal family for arguably or presumably generations. How you think that it is rightfully yours is lost on me. And I don't really know.

01:06:18
Katie DeMatteis
Position of maybe his family used to be the ruling class and just give us something, anything, or even shows that.

01:06:27
Sam Alicea
She is ineptitude in some way. Like something that they didn't do, correct?

01:06:31
Katie DeMatteis
Yeah.

01:06:32
Case Aiken
No, they literally just do the whole, like, oh, if you're not liberal and you're young, you don't have a heart. And if you're not conservative when you're old, you don't have a head kind of speech in there early on. It's like, she's young, obviously she's liberal. Again, getting back to this whole very unsophisticated look at politics.

01:06:49
Katie DeMatteis
Yes. Also no explanation for did she have an aunt or a mother who sort of taught her these principles and gave her a reason to be fighting for what she is fighting for? There's none of that.

01:07:01
Case Aiken
Was she in a carriage that was attacked by bandits and a lowly farmer saved her, literally.

01:07:06
Katie DeMatteis
That would have been better than going.

01:07:08
Case Aiken
A quest with him. And that's why that would actually be really funny if the movie just as a whole was like this idea of continuing d d stories. So everyone was like part of some campaign that has crossed paths at some point. The princess has already won her campaign, but it's now getting.

01:07:22
Ben MartinMooney
Yeah.

01:07:23
Katie DeMatteis
Ben, do you want to speak to the next couple of notes?

01:07:26
Ben MartinMooney
Yeah. Specifically the animation budget one, is that the one that you're thinking of? Yes. So when you have such a limited animation budget, it feels like a good way to spend it is on moments that matter. At the beginning of the movie, they spend a whole bunch of. I mean, I assume. I didn't mean a whole bunch being sort of a relative term in this context. A whole bunch of money.

01:07:50
Katie DeMatteis
High percentage of.

01:07:52
Ben MartinMooney
Yeah, not by dollar value. On a dragon that they killed without in any way giving. Like, there was no. It doesn't further the plot. It doesn't serve the plot in any way. The only thing that happens is they light the river on fire and then the people all go, oh, those mages, they are doing the thing. Those wascly wascals. It's like, okay, but you've essentially wasted your budget on a dragon. That does not matter. Yeah, we didn't get any exposition about why he doesn't have control or why that might be important. We don't get anything out of it. They just kill a dragon and that's it.

01:08:34
Sam Alicea
Yeah. Hashtag justice for that dragon. Because that was justice for the dragon. I was actually really sad. I love dragons. And I was really sad. I was like, oh, well, I guess this cements to me that he's like a real bad guy because I hate him now for killing the dragon, but.

01:08:52
Case Aiken
Other than especially the Gold dragon. And that should be kind of a selling point. Also on that one, again, they don't ever explain what type of dragon.

01:08:59
Katie DeMatteis
Right.

01:09:00
Ben MartinMooney
That could have been great foreshadowing for the rest of the movie. Right. Like, okay, it's important that he's trying to create this staff that controls red dragons, and it's not working on the gold dragon. And also killing a gold dragon, presumably based on their affiliation with the royal family, is kind of a big deal. Nothing. I think the note that I have on this is that opening scene is the movie equivalent of, like, this meeting could have been an email where it's like, you could have had a generic line about how you need to be able to control them or how not controlling them is important to this and saved that budget for later.

01:09:41
Case Aiken
Yeah, because I have a note about this one, but it's not really a pitch thing. So my thought was, one, they're hitting us with the special effects too fast on this one. Also, like, they're forcing you to deal with the terrible cg of this dragon right front and center, as opposed to suckering you into this movie and then hitting you with it. Like that is leading with your worst foot. But also, this scene would have been so much better if it was like. If they were just, like, ripping off Jurassic park and they had them bringing the dragon in to try to control it, and we never fucking see the dragon, and then they just imply that it killed something and they had to put it down by shooting with screen. Exactly. They could easily set that up.

01:10:22
Case Aiken
They could do a very similar type of scene. Maybe don't lean quite so much into. Is the staff working or something? It could just be they're trying to capture it before they get the staff. And you still get all of the same things going on there. And you can have blood coming out of this cage that we can't see inside of, but the blood is trickling out and then goes into the water. And then you still get the people being like, these mages. They're setting the rivers on fire. You can keep those things.

01:10:45
Sam Alicea
I think, also cool. We should see people are watching the fire, but they're watching it like, they're like, whoa. Damn you, mages. But there's no property damage. And I feel like there should have been property damage. I feel like there should have been a real goddamn mages. Now I got to rebuild this again. It should feel like how people feel about the Avengers in New York. It should feel like, gosh darn it, I just fixed that sign. Are you fucking kidding me? Spiderman.

01:11:15
Case Aiken
My gondola.

01:11:18
Ben MartinMooney
My cabbages.

01:11:19
Sam Alicea
Exactly.

01:11:20
Katie DeMatteis
My blueberries.

01:11:22
Sam Alicea
Exactly. All of those things. And you don't get that. You have that conversation, and it's just like. But it kind of feels more like all those crazy majors setting fire again. It doesn't feel like angry oppression, which you should know, just a little property damage would have gone a long way on that.

01:11:42
Ben MartinMooney
Yeah, shoot, have them burn like, a fleet of fishing boats. Have some fishmen nearby. Be like, I worked my entire life, up until I was an adult, to be able to afford my own fishing boat, and they've destroyed it. I can't replace that.

01:11:56
Sam Alicea
I mean, honestly, you could have gone, that's my boat. You got to be kidding me. And that would have been enough. And then just have snails be like, they did it again. Damn magic.

01:12:09
Katie DeMatteis
Darn it.

01:12:09
Sam Alicea
And just kind of like, now we've summed up everything and it hasn't even added that much more time to the runtime, thankfully.

01:12:17
Case Aiken
Oh, wait. Here's how you could actually use it as a great introduction for snails. And Ridley Freeborn have them out on the water having just stolen something trying to get away quietly and have the boat catch fire and they have to jump out and they lose everything that they stole. And then they're climbing out being like, those damage. We should report this. But then they'd ask why were out on the water. Well, we don't have to tell them that were just, like, breaking into XYZ. And then you set up your characters in a more dramatic scene and you establish the collateral damage.

01:12:49
Katie DeMatteis
Yeah.

01:12:49
Ben MartinMooney
So here's the only sticking point, I think, for that is then they would have to animate a boat on fire. And I don't know that would go.

01:12:57
Sam Alicea
Over all that well.

01:13:00
Case Aiken
I think you could buy a pretty.

01:13:01
Sam Alicea
Cheap boat if you are hiding the dragon. You've now saved some money and you can use it on the boat. That's a good point because now we've adjusted the dragon scene.

01:13:13
Case Aiken
I think you can buy, like, a barely still afloat, like, old fucking boat because we're just talking about something that has paddles. It doesn't have to be anything. Like, you put a bag in it. You draw, like, a little dollar sign on the bag and then you set it on fire and have the two actors get up before it gets too. There's a fire, but it's a controlled thing inside the boat that you can't see with the camera. And then they jump out and then you set the whole thing actually on fire.

01:13:37
Sam Alicea
Yeah.

01:13:37
Case Aiken
Have a shot of it.

01:13:39
Katie DeMatteis
I think that'd be totally reasonable and a better use of funds.

01:13:44
Case Aiken
I bet you could make that happen. Especially considering they're in Prague. You could probably make this all work with a really cheap. I imagine you could probably make that shot happen for, like, $200 before you get into the actual.

01:13:59
Sam Alicea
And I love those practical actor fees.

01:14:01
Case Aiken
And everything else practical.

01:14:03
Sam Alicea
Amazing.

01:14:03
Ben MartinMooney
Yeah. I think that $200 was their whole special effects budget, though. So that could be the issue.

01:14:09
Katie DeMatteis
That could be the problem.

01:14:10
Ben MartinMooney
Yeah, that could be it.

01:14:12
Katie DeMatteis
I'm looking through our notes and so many of these notes are just like, make it make sense, please. More exposition.

01:14:20
Ben MartinMooney
Don't be racist. Make it make sense.

01:14:22
Katie DeMatteis
Well, it's like, I want to understand the history not all the mages seem bad, but they all seem to be. But there seems to be, like a commentary on power and power corrupting. How did we get here? Are all of the mages complicit? Like, super unclear? We don't really get that definition of there's the few that control the many. Or it just makes it sound like all of the mages are corrupt. But then we get the girl mage, who is not corrupt, and it seems like her mentor is also not corrupt. Yeah, so that's all kind of jumbled. And I would like to see sort of whether like, maybe Jeremy Irons is sort of like the corruption that is kind of trickling down to the council. And it's not that mages necessarily want to have all of this power over the commoners.

01:15:08
Katie DeMatteis
Maybe it's that there's some sort of propaganda machine going on that's telling them, like, x, y and z thing about common people, which could also create an interesting dynamic between Ripley or Ridley or fucking whatever his name is, and the girl mage. Kind of like figuring out that the other person isn't what they've been told, the other person, like, all that kind of stuff.

01:15:29
Ben MartinMooney
And there is some dialogue between them which kind of supports this true separation of mages and commoners, where she's like, well, just like an uneducated commoner would, blah, blah. He's like, well, just like a stuck up mage would, blah, blah.

01:15:40
Katie DeMatteis
They're flirting like twelve year olds.

01:15:41
Ben MartinMooney
Yeah, exactly. Okay, so if you've already kind of got this separation in the script, you can lean into that.

01:15:48
Sam Alicea
Yeah, I think also you just need to. Because there is some in the text the teacher definitely does not hand over the squirrel, definitely sacrifices his life to make sure that it doesn't end up with Jeremy irons. So there is something there. I think it would better to kind of make the school, maybe try to be the bastion of. There are just certain institutions that try to stay separate from the politics of it. But really this headmaster is actually kind of trying to change things and support the empress. Because somehow our female mage, who we should just learn people's names. The lady mage, our lady mage, she knows. She defends the empress as if she knows the empress and as if she knows her agenda at some point.

01:16:40
Katie DeMatteis
Right?

01:16:40
Sam Alicea
And there's nowhere in the beginning of the film that you feel that she should have that connection to her. She definitely has her connection to her mentor who dies. But we don't get that. So we need somewhere in there for that mage to have had conversations or even just a letter from the empress, even if it's just a voiceover where she's reading it. It's just like, my dearest friend, how are you at school? I don't know anything of that matter. Lord crazy eyes. Because I don't remember journey eyes name either. Because everything's so forgettable in this movie is really on my tookus and he doesn't see eye to eye with me. I need to make things right. You and your teacher, whose also name I don't remember, need to help me with blah, blah. There is a scroll there. Can you please examine it?

01:17:39
Sam Alicea
And then we know that's why the fucking scroll is there and that is why it's happening. But we need something to connect them because then later on, that doesn't make any really.

01:17:50
Case Aiken
I just looked up her name and it's worse than I realized. So it's Marina Pretensea, which this just feels like the placeholder names for characters where it's like, oh, she's the pretentious one, or she's the pretense for why this is all happening. But none of these are good reasons for this.

01:18:08
Sam Alicea
No, Marina's fine.

01:18:10
Case Aiken
Marina's fine. I'm sure that's why I didn't notice it before, but I was. Wait, with that, right next to Ridley Freeborn, I'm like, oh, God, I can see what's going on here.

01:18:20
Sam Alicea
Well, he's freeborn. He doesn't belong to anyone.

01:18:24
Ben MartinMooney
Oh, is that what it is? Wait, hold on.

01:18:30
Katie DeMatteis
I have two and a half more things I want touch on. But one of them is just that Ben and I made the same note. But I want to read our verbiages because they're very different. So Ben said, don't half ass the old English for the blue lipped guy. Whole ass or no ass, this isn't Shakespeare, and his name isn't bottom. Talking about how he kind of sometimes slips into this shakespearean, what has thou done? And you're like, but then other times is just like, completely talking. Normally, he does it like three times. My note about that was, blue lip, baby needs to be all or none on daddy shakes.

01:19:11
Case Aiken
The eloquence is astounding.

01:19:15
Sam Alicea
But both of you are right.

01:19:18
Katie DeMatteis
We're both right. The other thing I wanted to say was there were two other points that they just gave no exposition on that I would have loved to either seen dropped or had fleshed out. There's at one point where I think, Marina Marida, Merida.

01:19:34
Ben MartinMooney
Marina. Marina, Marina.

01:19:36
Katie DeMatteis
There we go. Talks about the great war and about this big impact that the great War had. And the first time you hear about it is, it's like three quarters of the way through the movie, and then they just keep talking about the great war and how all this happened, and then they don't really explain why we give a fuck. Sorry, can you curse on here?

01:19:55
Sam Alicea
I just realized I do it all the time.

01:19:57
Katie DeMatteis
Great. Awesome. But, yeah, they don't explain why we give a shit about this great war. Exactly what happened. There's, like, a little bit later on where it's like, oh, this guy died in the great. Why are you laughing at me, Benjamin?

01:20:10
Ben MartinMooney
I just like that you used give a fuck. And then the next time you said.

01:20:12
Case Aiken
It, you used give a shit.

01:20:13
Ben MartinMooney
That's like, cool. You're like, yeah, I can swear I'm going to use a different one this time.

01:20:17
Case Aiken
Ha.

01:20:18
Katie DeMatteis
I don't know why we give a crap. It's fine.

01:20:21
Case Aiken
Rolling it back to PG 13. Okay. Rolling it back to primetime tv.

01:20:25
Katie DeMatteis
And then the second thing, without any real explanation, is when they go to this guild, it's like, a, they know that the three eyed guy is part of the guild. Why? I don't know. B, they seem to know an awful lot about this guild and about why they need to get in. And is it that snails and freehold BB are members of this?

01:20:52
Case Aiken
I think they are, which surprised me. When it happened, I was like. He started talking. I don't know if it was a con or if they're actually members of a thieves guild, but they're thieves, and it's a thieves guild. So I feel like we need to be very clear about if they're not part of the guild and they're going to start pretending that way. We needed a scene setting up that they wanted to be members of the guild.

01:21:11
Sam Alicea
I actually thought that I was like, oh, it would have been so much funnier. Like, it would have played for comedy if they were like, oh, we can just go to the thieving guild. And Marina was like, oh, you guys belong to guild. And they were both, you know, just kind of like that look. And then you get there, and the blue eye guy's like, no, you know, you're not part of us. Stop it. We already rejected you. You guys are terrible thieves. And that would have been a lot funnier because it's like, here. She's like, oh, you guys have a solution.

01:21:49
Case Aiken
And then they're like, oh, here's what it could be. At the top of the movie, when they're in the rowboat. The thing that gets burned down was the thing that they had to steal in order to get into the thieves Guild, and now they're no longer part of the. Now they botched it, so they weren't allowed into the thieves Guild. We could get a scene of them being like, that will never be in the thieves guild. And it's like, only the people in the thieves Guild have the thieves Guild, you say?

01:22:10
Katie DeMatteis
Because also, if they were part of the thieves Guild, then the reception that they get makes absolutely no sense.

01:22:16
Case Aiken
But then they start talking, and I think he did say, we're, like, guild members or something like that.

01:22:22
Ben MartinMooney
There are different thieves guilds and they're in a different chapter, and the different chapters don't necessarily get along because of internal politics, which makes sense, but give us something to work with so that we're not making these assumptions.

01:22:36
Katie DeMatteis
I'm glad that's the impression you got.

01:22:38
Sam Alicea
Because I had no idea what was happening.

01:22:40
Case Aiken
Yeah, no, I got the different chapters kind of vibe because they're from a different.

01:22:44
Sam Alicea
Makes sense.

01:22:45
Ben MartinMooney
I feel like the whole movie, and I think that this speaks to why Katie and I have so many notes about, like, please tell me more about this, is that the movie itself expects that you are willing to and will make all of these really big assumptions about backstory. And it's not that hard to put it in with small exchanges between characters to be like, wow, man, I really wish that whatever. We hadn't maybe even helped with stealing from this guild for our guild, and that's why they don't like us, because we did that thing back a couple of years ago when were trying to get in, and then we fluffed that one up because we're not actually very adept at our jobs.

01:23:28
Ben MartinMooney
There's any kind of short exchanges between characters throughout the entirety of the movie that would make a lot of these things make significantly more sense. Or, like, how do they even know that? So is it just all purple? Three eyed people are in the thieves guild.

01:23:46
Katie DeMatteis
They saw him, and they were just like, that guy.

01:23:49
Sam Alicea
I mean, honestly, he was different colored. So is this another racist thing?

01:23:54
Katie DeMatteis
Yes.

01:23:55
Sam Alicea
I have to assume that must be a thief.

01:23:58
Ben MartinMooney
He's got three eyes, purple skin. You know what they say about people with purple skin. They're all in thieves guild.

01:24:05
Sam Alicea
Yes.

01:24:05
Ben MartinMooney
And they all make weird hissing noises, even though there's no reason for them.

01:24:09
Sam Alicea
To be like, yeah, that tongue thing. I was like, that's unnecessary.

01:24:13
Ben MartinMooney
I know you're trying to make it.

01:24:15
Sam Alicea
Different, but that was an actor choice that I did not agree with.

01:24:19
Katie DeMatteis
I was like, no, I did not consent my guy.

01:24:22
Ben MartinMooney
You're purple and have a three eye.

01:24:24
Case Aiken
You're good.

01:24:24
Ben MartinMooney
You don't need to do anything else.

01:24:27
Case Aiken
To his credit, he may have been practicing the scene, thinking it was just going to be some basic face paint. Like all the other people in the.

01:24:31
Katie DeMatteis
Scene, they were like, just kidding.

01:24:35
Case Aiken
There's, like, one dude where his whole face is painted purple, and then clearly at his neck, you can see his fleshline, and then at his eyelids, it's just like, clearly like a caucasian man.

01:24:49
Sam Alicea
It's just kind of moment. And then I'll walk away and I'll do this slithering thing. But it's not like he has got a fork tongue or anything like that. There's nothing. And I'm like, that was a choice.

01:25:02
Case Aiken
I will say, though, the prosthetics on his head looked pretty good, but, yes, it was a weird thing. And the choice to be like, oh, clearly that guy, and not say, why? Because there's sort of this. Again, this movie and racial politics are real weird.

01:25:17
Sam Alicea
Yeah, super weird.

01:25:20
Case Aiken
They could have shown him pickpocket someone, and they saw it because they've got good perception roles, because they're good thieves.

01:25:26
Ben MartinMooney
Cool.

01:25:26
Katie DeMatteis
So much they could have done.

01:25:28
Sam Alicea
And again, sorry.

01:25:30
Case Aiken
Sight checks, spot checks.

01:25:32
Sam Alicea
They could have seen him do a secret handshake with someone, and that's, like, part of the guild. They're like, oh, okay, let's go. And they try to do it, and it's like one off. And then he knows it's a different chapter. He's like, wait a minute. You're not from this town.

01:25:50
Ben MartinMooney
You're not around here, are you? We're not.

01:25:54
Katie DeMatteis
That I thought was kind of. I don't want to say funny because funny gives it too much credit, but I feel like there were a couple of moments where. And it may have just been really bad writing and really bad filmmaking, but it felt like, oh, they just rolled a nat one. And if they had just put some commentary around it to, again, be a little bit self referential. There's a moment when they're sneaking into the magic school, are you going to catch me?

01:26:21
Ben MartinMooney
And he goes, yeah, I'm going to catch you. And then turns around and he proceeds to drop and not catch him.

01:26:25
Katie DeMatteis
Yeah. And it's like this. If you could just have thrown in something about rolling a nat one because it's such a short drop and it makes no sense. And it's kind of like, unless you're adding in those additional mechanics, that's just really lazy writing and direction.

01:26:46
Case Aiken
Yeah.

01:26:47
Ben MartinMooney
Which I think is probably theme of this whole conversation. Right. It's like maybe if we don't have lazy direction and writing, we actually have a halfway decent movie. Even with all of the other issues, if you are able to give the actors some kind of direction. I mean, Jeremy Irons is an amazing actor.

01:27:07
Katie DeMatteis
Yeah.

01:27:08
Ben MartinMooney
And his performance is incredibly lackluster. It's like, give him, like, a modicum of direction or just tell him, like, hey, look, do whatever you want with this character, as opposed to, like, this is the vision I have, which doesn't come across. I don't know.

01:27:24
Sam Alicea
I think with him, it's just like, he's doing a lot. I think he just doesn't know what any of it means.

01:27:33
Ben MartinMooney
He's trying really hard.

01:27:34
Sam Alicea
There is no actual neat to this script for anyone or anything. His villain is a carbon copy of a villain that you've seen anywhere. He's just a man who's after power. And the best way to get power, apparently, is to be in control of many dragons, which, to be fair.

01:28:00
Katie DeMatteis
Makes sense, is powerful. That's fair.

01:28:03
Sam Alicea
Yeah. I'm just going to say that from a cost effective kind of thing. If I were a villain, this would not be my plan. I know it sounds really cool, but dragons need to be fed. You need to have a place to put them. Like, logistically controlling lots of dragons. Unless you have a space where you can put those dragons and you know exactly what kind of destruction you want those dragons to do. It's not actually logical. It's cool. It's cool as fuck, case. And I know that's where you're going with it. I love dragons too, but it is a bad villain about why it's a bad villain plan.

01:28:44
Case Aiken
Like, they live in the same. Like, it would make more sense if Jeremy Irons is in a different city and wants to burn down the capital city of the empress and wants to command a fleet into there. Exactly. The fact that they are both part of the same swamp, he is like, let's burn my home down is like his plan.

01:29:09
Sam Alicea
And here's the thing. If it was like one dragon, right? If it was one dragon, like he was controlling the one dragon that lived close, and then you can use that as an enforcer. But a whole army, that's too many dragons. You can't feed that many dragons. The kingdom will go broke. Like, financially. That is a bad plan.

01:29:29
Case Aiken
Well, I mean, an invasion force. It's not a policing force. That's the other part of it. The plan doesn't make sense because they're not allowed to set up this warring kingdoms kind of situation, which is what it probably should be if you're going to have armies of Dragons.

01:29:44
Sam Alicea
And listen, even as an invasion force, this is not cost effective. I'm just putting that out there. I just want people to think about that in the future. Dragon warfare, not cost effective.

01:29:57
Ben MartinMooney
I mean, I feel like it's cost effective if you also instruct them to consume everyone that they come across. Right. Like be a self sustaining army. But also, then at some point you.

01:30:07
Katie DeMatteis
Run out of people to rule.

01:30:08
Case Aiken
Yeah, well, if you don't care about your dragons and you just want to take over this one kingdom next to you command the dragons, you take over the kingdom by having them all be eaten and whatnot. And then you're like, dragons, keep going. And then you just like, set up shop at the new kingdom.

01:30:22
Sam Alicea
That makes a lot of sense. I do like that plan.

01:30:28
Case Aiken
It at least makes sense.

01:30:29
Sam Alicea
Yeah.

01:30:30
Ben MartinMooney
It doesn't work in this particular film because theoretically he would like to then continue to have power over some number of people.

01:30:36
Case Aiken
He probably would still like buildings, I assume. Buildings are nice.

01:30:41
Ben MartinMooney
A roof over your head when you're trying to sleep as a fancy pants mage. Seems like the kind of thing that you would go after.

01:30:47
Sam Alicea
Exactly. Unless he's really introverted and his whole plan is just to empty out the city.

01:30:56
Ben MartinMooney
Way more sinister. And I am here for that version.

01:30:59
Case Aiken
What if this is just the Twilight Zone episode with the guy who wants to reading?

01:31:07
Sam Alicea
He's like, look, I could move to the countryside. Like I could find a cottage somewhere. But I like plumbing, so I'm going to stay here. But I need everyone else easier to build plumbing. No, not for him. He really likes his house.

01:31:25
Ben MartinMooney
He's a mage, not a plumber.

01:31:27
Sam Alicea
Yeah, that's what commoners are for. But he needs to get rid of them.

01:31:31
Ben MartinMooney
All they do is talk because none of them are literate, so they won't shut up and read.

01:31:35
Katie DeMatteis
Yeah, so true.

01:31:36
Ben MartinMooney
And therefore we have a fucking problem.

01:31:39
Sam Alicea
And so now we just have to get a bunch of dragons like you do with any kind of great prey to get rid of. You get a cat if you have too many mice. Right? So this is. Dragons are the equivalent. And apparently, according to him, I will just get all the people out of town.

01:31:57
Katie DeMatteis
I like it. I like this adaption.

01:31:59
Sam Alicea
Then he and the dragons can just chill, hang out. They're his only friends.

01:32:03
Katie DeMatteis
They can just hang. It'll be great. The last thing I know I said I had two more, but I have one more thing, which is that there was a weird thing with blue lips. Besides the fact that he's so important.

01:32:22
Ben MartinMooney
Yes.

01:32:22
Katie DeMatteis
I hope we're talking about the same thing. Teeing me up to be very important.

01:32:27
Ben MartinMooney
This better be a big deal.

01:32:29
Katie DeMatteis
When he is interrogating. Marina. Marina.

01:32:33
Sam Alicea
Marina. Meduki poopy. Marina.

01:32:36
Case Aiken
Misprintion.

01:32:37
Katie DeMatteis
Marina. He says something to her about how essentially because he. Proteus. I have this in my notes, which is why I know Jeremy Irons'name. I thought it was Proteus.

01:32:49
Case Aiken
No, it's profion.

01:32:50
Ben MartinMooney
I'm on the IMDb right now.

01:32:52
Katie DeMatteis
Well, I wrote down Proteus, which is apparently not correct, while I was watching the movie, which makes it even better. But while profion puts his earworm into him, essentially, and he says to Marina, he's like, I'm only doing this because he's killing me. Like, I wouldn't do this otherwise. However, before the worm gets put into him, he is very much like, a staunch follower of, like, it would have been more compelling, I think, if he had found out that Jeremy Irons was maybe not doing what he said he was doing.

01:33:28
Katie DeMatteis
And in order to control him, he puts this thing in him, and it's sort of like, if you don't do what I say, you will die, which would give this added level of complexity of, like, this isn't actually something that he wants to do, but if he doesn't do it, he'll have to die. Could also give him some sort of sacrificing arc at some point. It didn't make sense, and I felt like there was an interesting way that could have been done, and instead, we just got this weird. I wouldn't be doing this if it wasn't for this thing that wasn't in my head for the first 40 minutes of the movie, and I was still doing it.

01:34:00
Sam Alicea
Yeah, it is very od that. All of a sudden, he's just like, I didn't want to do this. And I'm like, bro, you watched him murder a dragon. You were down. You were in. You've been there since day one.

01:34:16
Katie DeMatteis
You were a day one, homie.

01:34:17
Sam Alicea
Yeah, it was very od. So, yeah, it would either have to be that, or you just leave it as, like, this is his punishment, right? Leave him as a true believer, which I think is actually much more fun. I don't want to have to feel sorry for him. Leave him as a true believer, and leave your good and bad, black and white in this and just have him be punished every time he fails with what's inside of him.

01:34:49
Katie DeMatteis
Yeah.

01:34:49
Sam Alicea
Because then it's better because he actually says to his men, don't fail on this account, or you'll be punished the way that I'm punished. And it's fine for him to be punished with this creature, because that just pushes along how evil Jeremy irons character is, that even someone who's totally loyal to him and does everything he says and is totally down for the cause, no matter what, he will still inflict pain on that person. And I was like, there was no reason for that. I felt like that scene should just be cut because I was like, that doesn't make sense to me.

01:35:27
Ben MartinMooney
A reminder that, yes, this guy is evil. This guy, though, significantly more evil.

01:35:32
Sam Alicea
Right?

01:35:32
Katie DeMatteis
Yes.

01:35:32
Sam Alicea
And I think if you want to rewrite that scene, instead of saying, I don't want to do this, actually have him be angry at her and kind of like, the pain. You're the reason I have this pain. You're the reason this is in my head. He's like, so now I have to end you, and hopefully my pain will end, and I will be rewarded. And she can be like, you'll never be rewarded, or whatever. And then she can shoot fucking magic at him because she never uses magic again after the first part of the film. Yes.

01:36:02
Katie DeMatteis
Fireball. Perfect. That's where fireball comes in. We found its moment, but we have.

01:36:10
Ben MartinMooney
To do, like, the normal dnd fireball thing where she's, like, looking for the spot that she has to shoot it. So she hits him but not herself.

01:36:16
Sam Alicea
Right? Yeah.

01:36:18
Katie DeMatteis
Excuse me.

01:36:19
Ben MartinMooney
How far away from here is 5 meters?

01:36:22
Case Aiken
It could even be, like, a cool moment where she throws it and it's like, hi, you missed. And then explodes behind him and engulfs.

01:36:28
Ben MartinMooney
Him as she turns away and walks away. Because we all know that cool people don't look at explosions.

01:36:32
Sam Alicea
Yeah, true. With her hair blowing.

01:36:37
Ben MartinMooney
True.

01:36:39
Sam Alicea
Yeah. Do a whole back with her terrible extensions.

01:36:42
Katie DeMatteis
Did we talk about how the glasses came off and the hair came down between scenes and they never talked about.

01:36:48
Case Aiken
It, but, oh, my God, my wife could not stop talking about it's a.

01:36:52
Katie DeMatteis
Wonderful life Mary effect, where it's like, if she hadn't married you, she'd be old and wear glasses, and it's like, why is her eyesight different when she's married or unmarried? I don't understand.

01:37:04
Ben MartinMooney
It's love. Love makes your eyesight better. Like carrot.

01:37:07
Katie DeMatteis
Yeah, for sure.

01:37:09
Ben MartinMooney
I do actually think that this is kind of coming back to the thing that we all agreed we would not continue to discuss the way that we would make it better in the context of. Which is having that sort of meta commentary of the kids. Like cracking jokes, like the dad's poorly written campaign from when he was like twelve or mom's poorly written campaign when she was twelve. Whatever was that? The kids could be like, please tell me that her glasses aren't going to come off, her hair is going to get let down and she's going to be suddenly pretty and the dad can be like, so about that. And then you smash cut to the scene where her hair is down and her glasses are off and suddenly she's pretty and they're like, dad, come on, that's overplayed. You're like, I was twelve.

01:37:50
Case Aiken
Yeah, you could definitely have like a plucky daughter. That's gross.

01:37:55
Ben MartinMooney
Come on. Really? And I feel like at that point, sure, run with those tropes. Enjoy those tropes. Use them, just comment on them and. Ok, now I will go back to let's assume that we are not doing movies that way.

01:38:10
Case Aiken
Right.

01:38:11
Katie DeMatteis
I'm curious what case's full rewrite of this looks. Right?

01:38:18
Case Aiken
Yeah.

01:38:19
Ben MartinMooney
Sam, do you have any more notes?

01:38:20
Sam Alicea
Yeah, well, I actually just want to say that I love everything that you guys said and I agree with a lot of it. And we did riff on that and I like the changes that we definitely made. I would absolutely, positively add in more. Well, first of all, snails needs to be cleaned up and he actually needs to be funny and he has to be given better lines. I think. We don't make him dumb. Okay. So first and foremost, everyone needs to know what role they play in the team. Because this movie, the biggest issue is that because everything is about the protagonist, the male protagonist, there's very little played to everyone else on the team. And even if people are fuck ups on this team, we still have to know what role they're playing on the team.

01:39:19
Sam Alicea
They can't just be a dwarf because Gimli goes along on Lord of the Rings. We need the dwarf to have a reason for being on the team, whether he's the muscle, which by the way, hilarious. It would be great. He's their little tank. That's great. I love a dwarven tank. But we have to know that everyone on this team has a role. And even if it's not fully explained, we have to see them do actions in the team and in actions in the team where they are doing that. And if we are going to keep our elven Ranger or tracker and NPC, that's fine.

01:40:03
Sam Alicea
But then when she sends them off places, she needs to leave to go back to the Empress, so that we include that person back into the story, and that way we don't lose the thread with what's going on there. And it doesn't even have to be her, actually. Like a scene, like an extra scene with the Empress, it can be with her. Like, you must go in here. Oh, are you going to come with us? I'm sorry. I need to get back to the Empress.

01:40:30
Katie DeMatteis
Blah, blah.

01:40:31
Sam Alicea
It's happening. And then we know what's happening back at the council and she can ride off. And now we know why she's not going into the fucking dungeon with them, right? Because if we don't have that, then we don't know. I mean, do I think that she should? Yes, it would have been great that she would have gone in and helped them out, but if you're going to run that route with her, then you just have to commit and then have her actually let us know more of the story so that we tie back to this larger story that is never explained to us in any capacity, really fully so that we know what's happening, what the empress is doing on her end, and we get that information from her.

01:41:14
Sam Alicea
She becomes actually, like, basically someone who gives us exposition at the same time she's informing. So I would do that and then just have the stuff done as teams. I think it would have been so much more fun to have both snails and Marina join him at the guild to run the thing. And it would have been cool for it to be a breeze for snails and. Oh, God, what is his name?

01:41:43
Katie DeMatteis
Rebel, whatever.

01:41:44
Sam Alicea
I don't know. Flyn Ryder. I'm going to call him Flyn Ryder. Flyn Ryder Freebird. Freeman Freebird, whatever his name is. Flyn Rider. And have her be humbled, right? Because she's pretentious and she gives them shit up until this point, and now she can't do stuff and they have to help her do it. And so she's just like, oh, wow. And then later on, have her do something to redeem herself so that they gain mutual respect other than just telling us that they have respect for each other, which doesn't make sense. And also, people are not falling in love that easily. You don't even have to do it. You don't have to bring the love line in it at all. I'm fine with it not happening. Flirtation ships are fine, but we don't have to do that. Also, snails doesn't hit on anyone.

01:42:35
Sam Alicea
He just wants to run away from people and actually make his obsession food. Because that's just better. It's just better. It's funnier. And they're thieves, so he probably doesn't get a meal very often. And I thought one of the things that was funny was when she told them to leave because she was being like, they've escaped from blue lips and they're sitting there, no actual names, sorry, everyone. They've escaped from blue lips and they're sitting there trying to figure out what the scroll means. And she's like, well, I can do it on my own. And they have the fake what is not actual flirting and just terrible writing.

01:43:20
Katie DeMatteis
The middle school flirting. Yeah.

01:43:24
Sam Alicea
And then they're like, well, fine, we'll leave. And he clearly doesn't want to leave. And he's like, actually, do you mind if we eat? And I feel like that should have been snails. It should have been like, yes, fine, we'll leave. And snails be like, actually, since you bought this, you don't mind that we eat, right? Because we got food. And he could be like, excuse me, snails. I'm trying to make a point. He's like, no, honestly, we don't have any more money. And she just bought this, so we should eat. We should eat, right? Because they should be on this case of desperation. And I feel like that would be funnier. And then the dwarf shows up and he just sits down and starts eating. And they're like. And feels like, excuse me. And he's just like, oh, I thought he was free.

01:44:05
Sam Alicea
And like, that's how he joins the fucking team. It's just like, he thought it was free food. She's like, sure, anyone can help themselves. And the dwarf's like, oh, really? Hi, my name is Fen. I don't know what his actual name.

01:44:20
Ben MartinMooney
It's Elwood Gutworthy.

01:44:23
Sam Alicea
That's a great name. I'm Elwood Gutworthy. And stance is like, seriously? And he's just like, really? And they just kind of stare at each other and you got tension from them, and then they both just start eating. And that would have been great. And that's how he joins them. And he's like, oh, I like a scroll. I can help give him some lines. And that would be great. That would be great. Because people join all the time in weird ways in taverns, and people be like, yeah, that's great. So really, for me, everything just has to do with the team. I don't even know how to fix the end y'all that's a hot mess.

01:45:00
Sam Alicea
But I think this movie would have been ten times more enjoyable if there was team actions and there was real interactions between everyone, earning respect, friendship, because that's what DNd is. Dnd is shit talking with your friends. And so, honestly, that's devoid of this film. And that's the saddest part. Case, take us home.

01:45:24
Case Aiken
All right. Well, first off, a thing that I think would be really funny with snails, death. Like, if you want to keep, like, a big dramatic death and whatnot for the character is if after Snails is dead, they introduce a new character who just gets along really well with freeborn, and it's just the character is rerolled by someone. Don't go into not even dealing with a framing device. Just like, here's the meta narrative of, like, oh, yeah, like all of a. Like, there's a sorcerer with the group now, and he just clicks really well.

01:45:50
Sam Alicea
And have him be like, have. Have the same actor play or like.

01:45:56
Case Aiken
A different Wayne's brother.

01:45:59
Sam Alicea
And just have him come in and just be like, hi, I'm a cleric now.

01:46:08
Ben MartinMooney
It could be snail's brother.

01:46:11
Case Aiken
Oh, it's land Gill. Okay.

01:46:13
Katie DeMatteis
Twin brother.

01:46:14
Ben MartinMooney
It's, I don't know, like hermit crab. Right? Like, you know, whatever.

01:46:18
Katie DeMatteis
Urchin.

01:46:19
Sam Alicea
Slug.

01:46:19
Case Aiken
Slugger. Slugger. It's the barbarian nickname. Slugger.

01:46:25
Ben MartinMooney
Before you get into all your things, I do have one quick question for the group, because Katie and I talked about this when were watching it. And there's a moment, and it's like, the only real line that the dwarf gets. It's when he looks. I think he looks at the camera and he goes, that's a terrible way to do business. And I was like, oh, fourth wall break. And Katie was like, I think it's just, like, supposed to be comedic. And him talking to himself. What is the impression that you guys got from?

01:46:50
Case Aiken
Mean, I think that it's playing soft on the fourth wall break because it is definitely looking at the camera kind of moment. But I think that it's allowing for a scenario of, like, oh, he's just, like, saying a funny line to the camera, but it's not necessarily. It's not going into the framing device, I guess.

01:47:07
Sam Alicea
Yeah, I felt like he was more saying it to himself, but then exactly like, case, like a very soft, like, are we good?

01:47:17
Case Aiken
Maybe it's knocking on it, but not fully breaking.

01:47:20
Sam Alicea
I'm like, but you're not the character to do it, sir. You don't even have a character. You just have food in your beard. That's the biggest problem with this script.

01:47:29
Ben MartinMooney
I feel like they could have done more with that, and it could have been funny just throughout the whole film. But that's sort of an aside.

01:47:35
Katie DeMatteis
Sorry, commentary. Again, it would have been great if.

01:47:39
Sam Alicea
That was snails, too. Just give him a moment to be like, wait, we're doing what? And look into the camera and be like. And then go on and do it?

01:47:53
Ben MartinMooney
Yeah. I feel like there are these little moments throughout the film where it's like, oh, you had a good idea, you just never followed through and you never applied it to any other part of the film.

01:48:04
Katie DeMatteis
I also feel like every good idea that's there is like a seed and is watered down. Even that, where it's like, that could have been a fun fourth wall break, but instead of just committing, you kind of towed the line.

01:48:18
Case Aiken
Same with the tone.

01:48:18
Katie DeMatteis
I feel like there's so much line toeing in this movie where it's like you can't pick what you want it to be. So instead it's nothing.

01:48:25
Case Aiken
Right. It's afraid to go fully camp. It doesn't have the budget to be fully serious, so it kind of ends up in these sort of like, halfway points for everything. Yeah, I totally agree on that front, because it would be fun if it was like, at some point someone just said, our DM hates us. What was that? Yeah, because it'd be great. And then you don't even need to do the framing device of the DND. But if the characters just kept on being like, oh, that was a critical fail, had moments where they were aware of it, we'd also be cool with it. That would be a lot of fun. This movie could be fun, which is like a novel concept here.

01:49:01
Case Aiken
So I have a bigger change and a smaller change version of it because I can't help but do a bigger change one. But also, I am not sure that it could have been done based on the actual logistics of this whole movie. So bigger change one is appeal to wizards of the coast and say, hey, this movie is coming out right at the time that you're launching third edition, lean into the things that are cool about third edition specifically. And I think that every single hero should be a class from third edition, from the third edition player's handbook, and then the villain should be all the Prestige classes from the DMG. Just like, lean in real hard. Because you know what, man? We are so bad with names. Blue Damadar. Yeah.

01:49:46
Case Aiken
So if he was a blagger or the anti paladin update for third edition, how much cooler would that be if he was one of the holy knights that were protecting the empress and whatnot and he betrayed her, and you just set him up as like, okay, he's a blagger. And then you could have all these characters. And that's why I specifically said sorceress joins the group later, because it could be like, oh, he's good with magic. Oh, but he was kicked out of the school, and he's just getting by on his natural charm and natural magic because then you lean in, you've got freeborn be the bard, you've got snails be the rogue. It's already kind of set up in there.

01:50:22
Case Aiken
Just lean into it a little bit more in terms of like, okay, well, they've got a barbarian who's traveling with them for a little while, a slugger, if we want to do that. Also like your dwarf fighter. Sure, that makes sense. Elf Ranger. Yeah, we're not creating any new ground.

01:50:37
Katie DeMatteis
Here, but breaking any glass ceilings or anything like that.

01:50:40
Case Aiken
Exactly. But it's fine. In fact, they both actually look just like the characters, like the iconic artwork in the third edition. DMG it is a dwarf fighter and an elven ranger. And they look really close already. And just lean into those moments of that because admittedly, third edition doesn't necessarily break new ground in terms of the lore and the setting of it all. A lot of it's mechanical stuff introduced, like getting away from Thacko in favor of Bab and trying to simplify everything to basic D 20 roles. But hey, it'd be cool if we did the framing device. That'd be really dope. We could explain how all that works. That's all fun, too. But even if you're not, have the classes be one to one, have points where we reference this all really kind of lean into those areas.

01:51:23
Case Aiken
You can do all the prestige classes as the villains because that was how they were supposed to be designed anyway. And have fun with that whole situation. I think that if we're doing a big rewrite, it would really make sense for Marina pretensa, the pretentious, like, when she gets away with a paladin, a knight who's, like, protecting her, and then gathers everyone together. And so that way you can get the natural interplay of a paladin and a rogue, which is one of the best dynamics of any parties because you always have wonderful bickering between the two where it's like, oh, we have to steal something. Stealing is wrong, but no, we have to steal something to save the kingdom. God I don't know what to do. You just don't sit over there. We'll be back. Right back.

01:52:05
Ben MartinMooney
You're muffs.

01:52:06
Case Aiken
It'll be exactly great moments for that. We could really lean into sort of like the comedy of that relationship. We could set up some more. There are spots where clearly they just tried to write around scenes that they couldn't shoot or anything like that. Like when they get sucked into the map and then they pop back out. I thought that was a great mechanism for storytelling that is horribly underutilized because it would have been such a good joke to pop out and have them be like, art. Like, everything's settled, everything is good. Everyone's like, hey, wait, what just happened here? It's like, oh, craziest stuff, and have it be a little bit of a noodle incident. No one else is aware of what happened on the inside, but the two that went inside the map have really strong feelings about it all.

01:52:49
Case Aiken
And there's a lot of changes in the relationship as a result. Those would be fun kind of things, and I think that would all work really well in terms of just selling D and d as a whole. But assuming that you couldn't quite go so far on that one, because supposedly, when this movie got greenlit as it was, they were only allowed to use an earlier draft of the script. So I have to imagine that you can't get too crazy on the rewrites. Like, for whatever reasons that we're talking about here, you can't do a wildly different movie from what was approved. But you know what you could do? You could recut the movie into a much better configuration and shoot it better.

01:53:28
Case Aiken
And so my thought is, even if you're not technically allowed to reorder the scenes beforehand, when you go into filming, you just plan to do so. And you have some good notes about this one. And you open at the tavern, maybe do the Jurassic park scene that we're talking about as the cold opening. Keep that in there. That's still kind of fun. And if it's shot in an interesting way, is exciting and cool. And like I said, we're just ripping off Jurassic park fun. Then cut to the tavern, and you can have a similar scene, and they can rewrite the dialogue a bit and have it be like, okay, why are we called all here? Oh, the mage girl called everyone here. Or better yet, the elf girl called everyone here if you can insert her character.

01:54:05
Case Aiken
But even if you can't, the mage girl called them here because they have to steal this thing because she has to explain why. And then all the scenes that are all these expository bits can be flashbacks or can be them telling stories. Because I think, again, there's the storytelling component of D and D that you should also be conveying and give the sense that this isn't all just backstory leading up to the quest for this one character. They all are on their own respective quests. Because, again, the problem of this movie is that it's trying to do this one character's hero's journey. But D. D. The magic of it is when everyone feels like they're the hero of the campaign.

01:54:41
Case Aiken
So we should try to establish that a bit more and have snails is kind of stuck as being a sidekick, but everyone else should kind of feel like they're on their important quest and it's like, wait, but dwarf, how'd you get here? Oh, they just found me in a pile of garbage.

01:54:57
Katie DeMatteis
Where are the back stories?

01:54:59
Sam Alicea
I've been screaming it. And again, justice for snails. He doesn't have to stay as a sidekick. He can just be a friend. He can be a friend. It's just the way that it's written. Everyone is technically the sidekick to the male protagonist. To Flyn Ryder, everyone is to Mr.

01:55:23
Ben MartinMooney
Free Bird, Winona freeborn.

01:55:27
Sam Alicea
Yeah. Everyone is basically just there. Even the empress is a side character to him. That's the thing that's the most disappointing.

01:55:44
Ben MartinMooney
Yeah.

01:55:44
Case Aiken
Or if you really want, like, a good twist, like they're. They're all brought together to steal a thing by someone who is a shadowy figure and it turns out to be an agent of irons. It could be purple lips or blue lips himself. That would be workable situations for it all. Ultimately, I think we all like the framing device the most. It's just like, how do we make it all kind of fit? And it sucks that this movie is just not budgeted well enough. And it came out at the exact wrong time for us to say, like, oh, well, these special effects things are easy. Like, it was 2000.

01:56:17
Ben MartinMooney
There's, like, good movies came out in 2000.

01:56:19
Katie DeMatteis
Ben made a list of all the movies that came out 2000.

01:56:23
Ben MartinMooney
Very good movies came out in 2000. There is no excuse.

01:56:28
Case Aiken
Fair, but I'm just saying that in terms of some of the effects, for someone who doesn't know what they're doing, the movie should focus more on the human stuff at the beginning and not really deal with the magic stuff until later on, so that we're actually kind of lured into it all. We shouldn't be seeing big special effects at the start. And it should be things that we start seeing bits and pieces of as we go. I really think that the first half of the second act should just be that giant dungeon or, like, the guts dungeon, maybe bigger. That'd be great. I realized that they probably couldn't think of anything. They'd have to invent the traps for them to go through. And they probably just weren't creative enough to figure out the traps. At least not at that early draft.

01:57:06
Sam Alicea
Right?

01:57:06
Case Aiken
Again, this feels like an early draft. They're like, we'll flesh this out later. And maybe they did at a certain point and then had to go back to like, there's a fucking dungeon, man. I think they have to go to.

01:57:19
Sam Alicea
I mean, I will say this in defense of the special effects. I've watched a lot of really bad science fiction movies. I've watched a lot of really bad stuff. Even on the Sci-Fi network, I will watch things with bad special effects. But this movie is just not fun, so it doesn't matter. You can't forgive. People wouldn't have cared. They would have been made fun of. It would have been made fun of. But people fucking watch stuff like Sharknado, okay? People watch things like that. So that's not the big problem. The problem is that this script is not good.

01:58:04
Case Aiken
I mean, it's got a Wayans brother in it. They could have leaned into that sort of like, this is a full on goof about kind of fantasy movies. But also, it's like a year before that became the thing to do. If this movie had come out a year later or two years later, I guess with fellowship of the rings already being out and they could really be riffing on the new wave of fantasy tropes. But I'm trying to think about what else had just come out at this point. Like, Aragon, what big fantasy.

01:58:32
Katie DeMatteis
They make them to a movie? Yeah, Jeremy Irons.

01:58:36
Sam Alicea
Wait, what?

01:58:38
Case Aiken
Yeah.

01:58:39
Katie DeMatteis
Jeremy Irons. What were you doing in 2000? I guess 1999 would be when he filmed it. But the one issue that I did have with the maze that I would change is when he finally gets into that last room, he just fucking picks the thing up. There's no traps. Think about Indiana Jones when he picks up the thing, and then it's like, oh, shit. Picking it up triggered whatever. I was expecting something like that to sort of round out the experience, and instead he just picks it up and everyone's like, well, shit. All right, cool.

01:59:12
Sam Alicea
Yeah, he just got, like, the one warning, and that was it.

01:59:14
Ben MartinMooney
Yeah.

01:59:15
Case Aiken
Okay. The Aragon came out a few years later, actually. So it was 2006. So not quite there, but close. Yeah. Because when this movie was first pitched, it was like 1990, and it's in the wave of a lot of the 80s fantasy movies like Legend or like Conan the barbarian movies that are either a lot of style or honestly fairly fun, but like low magic kind of movies. So they wanted to do something kind of different from that. But I don't know if the audience had the lexicon to describe what they were trying to poke fun at or deal with or that they should have been trying to poke fun at and deal with if we're going to do a parody at this exact window. But, like three years later, they definitely would.

02:00:00
Sam Alicea
Yeah, you're right, because a lot of the fantasy magic movies that had come before that are very spread out. Right? So you've got like Excalibur and Lady Hawk and Legend, but those are happening years and years apart. And so it's not really present the way space alien movies were for spaceballs. Right. Where you could make fun of Star wars and you can make fun of aliens and a whole bunch of different space opera odysseys in one movie that became a spoof. So, yeah, that's not possible yet for this because it's just too far apart. There's only so many King Arthur's tales that you can.

02:00:47
Ben MartinMooney
That's true.

02:00:47
Case Aiken
I mean, because it would be fun if they did a movie that was like, if it wasn't the spoof, like full camp. Can you imagine something that was just like, super bright colors for everything. Everyone's crazy over the top. Everyone is being a wild kind of thing. This would be where it could be like an implied. They're all player characters in a bigger DND game, but everyone is being verbose. Maybe even the characters are specifically like. We'll forget details and all the elements that would actually play along with it where there is no framing device that is on screen. But we all understand it throughout the whole movie. Yes, but then also, I'm still curious at this time, would the audience have gotten it? Because the DND fans would have. But DND was so much smaller at this point.

02:01:34
Ben MartinMooney
Here's what I will say. They could have gone the route of Robin Hood med and tights, which predates this. You have a basis upon which to go. Like campy, medieval, funny people will get it whether or not you play d. D. Sure. Are there some jokes in there that you probably wouldn't get? Yeah, absolutely. But Robin Hood men and tights exists at this point in time. The framework for you to do a movie in that vein has been laid. You can lean into that trophy. Fun stuff. You've got all kind of, in a lot of the ways you've got all the characters right. You've got Dave Chappelle being a really funny but not dumb character with funny things like pumping up his sneakers. Weird shit where you're like, this is topical to pop culture of the time and very entertaining.

02:02:37
Ben MartinMooney
There's no reason to not go that route if you don't want to.

02:02:40
Sam Alicea
And men in tights.

02:02:45
Case Aiken
I agree with you. I will say that men in tights, though, is directly coming in the heels of Prince of Thieves. And Robin Hood has a very strong tradition.

02:02:54
Ben MartinMooney
That is fair.

02:02:54
Case Aiken
Yes, that is a fair parroting, but I agree. I think that probably, like I said, just a couple more years later, it would be even. And it's not even like DND so much as just like fantasy movies. In the window of the. There was some. There was Dragon Heart. They did Dragon Heart, but there wasn't like a big hit. The way that right after this is the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter back to back, and you could be referencing things and just expect the general audience to get the jokes and be with you on it all. It would work, but it might not be one that would be a hit.

02:03:29
Katie DeMatteis
Sure.

02:03:30
Sam Alicea
Yeah.

02:03:30
Case Aiken
But also in 2000, I don't know.

02:03:32
Katie DeMatteis
But also, was this a hit?

02:03:33
Case Aiken
No. Yeah, this is a failure on all fronts. So just a better movie would have been.

02:03:40
Sam Alicea
I mean, honestly, the movie that we're talking about could have been a cult classic case. It would have been a hit, but it would have at least gotten a better review from me. I've cracked more jokes than this movie did on this movie during this podcast.

02:03:58
Katie DeMatteis
This is a wild take, but I think I'd rather watch the room.

02:04:05
Ben MartinMooney
Definitely.

02:04:08
Sam Alicea
This is a bad movie, but it's not bad funny. No, it's just boring.

02:04:19
Ben MartinMooney
It's forgettable bad.

02:04:22
Sam Alicea
It's because it's devoid of joy. It's not even that. The performances aren't great, but they're not terrible. They're not horrible. It's not like you roll your eyes every time the lines are bad, but the performances aren't. Whatever. They're fine. They're fine. And there are some things in the movie that are fine. There are people that are there to do the work. Definitely. Right. And some of the dragons look okay. It's just that everything's brown and it's boring. It's a boring palette.

02:04:57
Katie DeMatteis
Glowing review.

02:04:58
Sam Alicea
It's a boring palette. Yeah. In the grand scheme of things, it's not like something that you would sit around and watch and repeat with your friends and laugh and create drinking games about which you would do with the room. Like, you're not going to do that with this. I'm never going to watch this again after this.

02:05:18
Katie DeMatteis
We had to watch it twice, which.

02:05:20
Ben MartinMooney
Was, well, we did one and a half times.

02:05:22
Katie DeMatteis
One and a half.

02:05:22
Sam Alicea
We had to stop halfway.

02:05:24
Ben MartinMooney
I think we got to an hour and we're just like, I just don't want to anymore. You hit a wall and you're like, I can't do it. I got to walk away from this. We hit absolutely that moment. We just kind of looked each other and we're like, I think I'm just going to call.

02:05:42
Katie DeMatteis
Like, I think we're prepared. As prepared as we can be, right?

02:05:46
Case Aiken
Mean, I imagine that Courtney Solomon hit that point, too, when this movie was fair.

02:05:51
Katie DeMatteis
Empathy for Courtney.

02:05:53
Sam Alicea
And listen, I don't have any hate for anyone who worked on, like, making movies is hard. I would like to say that because I did crack a lot of jokes on it. Making movies, it's a hard thing. And we have the ability to. We're taking another pass. We have hindsight. We're like, oh, that was a bad choice. But I will say this is not a good movie. You don't have to watch it. Don't watch it. Do I recommend? No. Zero out of ten. Don't watch.

02:06:26
Ben MartinMooney
It's not even like, watch it or don't watch it unless you're a masochist. It's truly, just, don't.

02:06:31
Katie DeMatteis
Don't do it.

02:06:32
Sam Alicea
Yeah.

02:06:33
Case Aiken
It does not enrich your experience in any way.

02:06:35
Sam Alicea
No. Like, if I were doing laundry and it was in the background, I would still go find something else and I might even just watch cable news over it. Yeah, I don't even like cable news.

02:06:46
Ben MartinMooney
It's an hour and 47 minutes that you truly will just never get back. And you could spend that hour and 47 minutes doing probably literally anything else, and it's a better use of your time.

02:06:56
Sam Alicea
Yeah.

02:06:57
Ben MartinMooney
God, I truly hope that, God forbid any of the people that were ever in this, listen to this or hear anything about it is not perfect.

02:07:09
Katie DeMatteis
I do feel like the people who were in this movie or worked on this movie know that this movie, I think so. Was not good.

02:07:19
Case Aiken
Yeah, pretty much like the quotes I could find all indicated that everyone was fairly aware of the lack of needle pushing on their careers, that this was some of them.

02:07:29
Katie DeMatteis
Their needle got pushed a little bit backwards.

02:07:34
Case Aiken
Well, I feel like we've hit the wall, which is just how steep the slope to get up to making this a good movie was. It was basically just a solid wall. So, Ben, as you said, if you have 2 hours ish of free time and you shouldn't watch this movie, what's a thing that they can do instead? Why don't the two of you give your plugs for content that would better than this?

02:07:58
Katie DeMatteis
See, I was going to say watch Andor because we started it last night.

02:08:02
Sam Alicea
But I don't think that's what you're going for. I agree with it. Andor is good. But also, what else could they do?

02:08:11
Ben MartinMooney
What else could they do? Katie?

02:08:13
Katie DeMatteis
Oh, I thought you were going to.

02:08:14
Ben MartinMooney
Okay, I'll start. Go ahead. You're better at the plugs than I am. I'll be totally honest, I'm so bad at plugging.

02:08:21
Katie DeMatteis
Clearly we're really bad at self promotion. What you could do instead is you could go to slash amateurishproductions or amateurishproductions on YouTube and you could watch some combination of ttrpgs with a pretty heavy focus on d d. Hopefully better plots than Dungeons and Dragons had. And as well as some interviews, we do have some World of Warcraft streams that are up on our YouTube and also a bit of just like fantasy world building and TTRPG creation, which has been super fun. I'm probably forgetting other things that we do. So, Ben, if you have any other plugs you'd like to throw in, please.

02:09:07
Ben MartinMooney
Well, so by the time this comes out, we will have started our actual play campaign about a month prior. So that happens on some night of.

02:09:20
Katie DeMatteis
The week at a Tuesday at 09:00 p.m. That's the one starting in January.

02:09:25
Ben MartinMooney
There you go. As well as probably sometime around when this episode comes out, we are intending to have a podcast as well, where we talk to people who have expertise in various subjects that it's going to be called how the fuck. Where we ask them how the fuck they do their job. And it'll be everything from writing to movie production to voice acting, sort of like spinning the full gamut. And as we continue to find people who do interesting things, we're going to casting. We have one of Katie's high school, or I get high school friends, middle school friends, high school friends did casting on a bunch of Marvel movies. So we're going to talk to her about casting and what that's like. So it's just like a full spectrum conversation piece where we learn a little bit about what it is.

02:10:17
Ben MartinMooney
They do and share that with everyone who is interested.

02:10:23
Katie DeMatteis
We have so many amazing people lined up to interview and have had exactly zero time to do any of the interviews. So when it happens, it's going to be awesome. But just stay tuned because we'll see when it happens. But until then, twitch tv amateurishproduction.

02:10:40
Case Aiken
Yeah. And by the time this is dropping, assuming all goes well, the Pathfinder game that we had talked about doing will be happening as well there. But that's going to be a limited engagement since I have only so many spoons.

02:10:53
Katie DeMatteis
I feel that so deeply in my.

02:10:55
Ben MartinMooney
Soul and in my heart, just like washing the same spoon, being like, please don't fail me now.

02:11:02
Katie DeMatteis
Assembly line. I'm trying to clean.

02:11:07
Sam Alicea
Spoons and he's just rotating the both of them. Only one of them is operational at any given time.

02:11:13
Ben MartinMooney
Boy, is that relatable.

02:11:16
Case Aiken
And give social handles, by the way, Ben, Katie, if people want to find you, follow you, where can they do so?

02:11:21
Katie DeMatteis
I am Katie Mara. Mara has an h. So K-A-T-I-E-M-E-H-E-R-A on all of the socials, which is Instagram, Twitter, and Hive. And that's all the socials that I have. So those are all the socials. And I do have a TikTok, but I don't use it. So please don't follow me there. I just use it to scroll.

02:11:44
Ben MartinMooney
Yield, doom scroll.

02:11:45
Katie DeMatteis
I've had some people follow me on my TikTok and I'm like, oh, no, there's nothing for you to see here.

02:11:51
Ben MartinMooney
Empty.

02:11:52
Katie DeMatteis
Just where I peep.

02:11:55
Ben MartinMooney
I am. Ben underscore m. Underscore squared on, I think, pretty much all my social media at this point.

02:12:03
Katie DeMatteis
Aren't you, Ben underscore mar. Underscore moo on Twitter?

02:12:05
Ben MartinMooney
No, I changed that. I brought it all into line because it's easier to remember one. And also, I would forget.

02:12:13
Katie DeMatteis
That's fair.

02:12:13
Ben MartinMooney
Yeah. And I'm on Twitter and Hive and Mastodon and Instagram. And I also have a TikTok that I also posted.

02:12:22
Katie DeMatteis
I am really bad at this.

02:12:23
Ben MartinMooney
I have one video, and it's a response video to someone being like, what's it like being old? And I was like, you ever heard of hemorrhoids?

02:12:30
Case Aiken
You will.

02:12:31
Ben MartinMooney
And that is the one video that I have posted on my TikTok because he was talking about people over 30, and I was like, how dare you, sir?

02:12:41
Katie DeMatteis
So I think the TLDR is Katie Mara, Benham Square. Don't follow us on TikTok.

02:12:48
Ben MartinMooney
Yeah.

02:12:48
Katie DeMatteis
Yay.

02:12:50
Case Aiken
We'll see when this comes out, if the dust is settled on the whole Twitter thing and where we're all hanging, where the party at?

02:12:57
Ben MartinMooney
Yeah, we'll figure that one out as we go.

02:12:59
Katie DeMatteis
We'll find out.

02:13:01
Case Aiken
But if the dust is still settling, Sam, where to party at for you?

02:13:08
Sam Alicea
Well, here at another pass, you can find me here, and you can sometimes find me at the discord when I decide to show up or remember that it exists and then nowhere else because I'm lost in a dungeon somewhere with a very unreliable rogue, and it's just terrible. And I'm just waiting for case to answer a message so that I can get out of here and you can find case.

02:13:33
Case Aiken
Well, when I decide to answer that message cantrip from you, I will be responding probably on Twitter as long as it lasts, which is at case Aiken Hive I set up at case Aiken Mastodon. I don't remember what the hell it was trying to be at case Aegon, but it's weird. And I don't fully understand Mastodon. And then just to be weird, my instagram is Ketzel coattle five because I am holding on to that aim screen name from when I was in high school, where I am both a mythology nerd and a legion of superheroes nerd.

02:14:08
Katie DeMatteis
I love it. It's great.

02:14:10
Case Aiken
So you can find me there. You can find the podcast on Twitter at another pass. You can find all of the stuff that we're working on over@certainpov.com where you can find more episodes of this show, tons of other great shows. I also host Men of Steel over there, and I'm also the person doing all the video content on our YouTube channel, which is certain PoV Media. So check out clips from this show, clips from Men of Steel, clips from fun and games, and the sidequest videos, and check out my Superman analog series over there on our YouTube channel. So check all that out, then circle back, head over to certainpov.com, find all the great shows I'm going to give a shout out to.

02:14:46
Case Aiken
Let's rewatch, which is not actually how I know Pat Edwards, but it's Pat Edwards show and he is the one who introduced us.

02:14:57
Ben MartinMooney
Pat's the best.

02:14:58
Case Aiken
Yeah. If there is anyone who is great at just networking, it is Pat Edwards. He is a great person and he has a great group of people on that show along with him. Brett, Sam, and Ash are all awesome. Let's rewatch is super dope. You should check it out. It's a lot of fun. It's like this where you watch the movie in the middle of the episode.

02:15:16
Ben MartinMooney
Amazing.

02:15:17
Case Aiken
Check that out. That's a great one. And then check out what we've got coming up next. Sam, what have we got next?

02:15:24
Sam Alicea
Next time we'll be talking about Highlander two, the quickening. But until then, if you enjoyed this, pass it on.

02:15:36
Ben MartinMooney
Thanks for listening to certain point of View's another pass podcast.

02:15:40
Case Aiken
Don't miss an episode.

02:15:41
Ben MartinMooney
Just subscribe and review the show on iTunes. Just go to certainpov.com.

02:15:49
Sam Alicea
Another pass is a certain pov production. Our hosts are Sam Alicea and case Aiken. The show is edited by Matt Storm. Our logo and episode art is by case Aiken. Our intro theme is by Vin Macrie, and our outro theme is by Matt Brogan.

02:16:05
Katie DeMatteis
I mean, it looks like it's recording locally. There's little things for sound, so I'm just going to leave it.

02:16:10
Sam Alicea
Yeah.

02:16:11
Katie DeMatteis
Hope for the best.

02:16:12
Case Aiken
Yeah, well, I mean, that's why we're all about backups on another pass, because hope for the best is often the best way to handle it. But at the same time, we want to make sure we don't have to rerecord.

02:16:22
Katie DeMatteis
Absolutely.

02:16:23
Case Aiken
And it's just so that there's something on the timeline so that when the editor is looking at it. Yeah.

02:16:30
Sam Alicea
Hi, Matt. Hello, Matt.

02:16:32
Ben MartinMooney
Hi, Matt.

02:16:33
Case Aiken
Hi, Matt.

02:16:35
Ben MartinMooney
Hi, Matt. Matt's like, God damn it.

02:16:40
Sam Alicea
No, he loves when we are recording this.

02:16:42
Case Aiken
Matt is currently in the process of going through our five part planet of the apes retrospective. So far, all of them have been over 2 hours.

02:16:50
Sam Alicea
Yeah, he's fine. He's fine. He loves it. Thank you, Matt. Matt, thank you so much for everything that you do. And say hi to Otis. That's his dog. Hi, Otis. Hello, I'm Ionas again.

02:17:06
Ben MartinMooney
Yes, it is. I disembodied voice in the recording.

02:17:13
Case Aiken
Cpov certainpov.com.