I know this thing is terrible, but it’s $8.67 at Sam’s and it has a documentary on the “history of adventure games” included. Is the documentary interesting at all?
I don’t care if it has a piece of the Ark of the Covenant with it. Fuck that horrible film.
As a side note, I would love a DVD of Mazes and Monsters, the TV movie that forced my mom’s hand and banned D&D from my household (which made it about 5000 times more fun to play after that).
I would love to see Mazes and Monsters. That or some book (I forget the title), got D&D banned in my house as well. In high school, after driving back from my friend’s house, I finally copped to my Mom that I had just played some D&D. Her expression was angered and slightly horrified. Then I bit into my cat’s neck and drank blood!!!
Since my grandfather played wargames and my aunt and uncle played RPGs I never got to go through the D&D scare. However, since I am the oldest person of my generation in my family, once I was of breeding age there was a massive effort on behalf of all my family to turn my attention away from geeky things and try to transform me into a social butterfly. It failed. Miserably. Now they’ve given up and focused their efforts on my female cousins. It’s also failing miserably.
My dad hated D&D. My mom liked it because it got me out of the house, to some other kids’ house to play. I ended up on the news twice with reporters asking me about worshipping satan. I wish I’d thought of it, but this other kid there had a great quote. “I play tennis, but I don’t worship the racket. What makes you think this is different?”
Not so long ago (in fact, I’d say it was just prior to Doom so this is just over 10 years ago), if you played video games, then you were a geek or you didn’t tell your cool friends that you played video games. Now, video games are a billion dollar a year business and everybody plays, from cool or geeky to young and old. I can’t help but to chuckle when I read some of the threads over on the games section about how some games are low-brow just because the graphics are “cutsie” anime figures or that you’re a nerd or geek because you like a specific genre or a game is sub-par because it’s for consoles and not PC’s. My, how times have changed. I don’t think your family needs to worry about changing you because the times have changed and keep on changing.
Mark, the movie is fun. Watch Jeremy Irons’ face at the end of all of his scenes, he’s looking for booze or his trailer or something. He’s got “what the hell was I thinking?” as subtext for every line.
Watch it with the commentary. Constant “if we had more money we would’ve…” There’s even a mockup of a scene the filmed but couldn’t afford the CG for.
And my parents were born again Christians who dragged us to Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker’s Christian Resort (Heritage USA) for summer vacation every year, but they never banned D&D. As far as they could tell, I was reading things, eating Doritoes, drinking soda, and rolling dice. At least I wasn’t smoking dope (that came later).
That’s sort of funny. However, the film is pure pain. I will give it this: it had a dungeon and a dragon in it. When I saw it in theaters, with every intention of liking it (I don’t see films I think I’m going to hate, like Tom Chick apparently did with the LOTR films; he hated Fellowship, hated TTT, and yet saw ROTK the first week it was out…?), and I remember the stupid-ass ending. Some guy brought his poor little kids, they literally started crying when Marlon “The Least Funniest” Wayans died, and then at the end (by which time everyone was crying) they were asking their dad “What happened? What did that (the ending) mean?” His dad had no idea. What a stupid fucking film, I’m glad you can wring some enjoyment out of it. I can’t.
I didn’t think it was pure pain. Parts of it were fun. Jeremy Irons was probably the best part, but the main character, had he a better movie to be in, seems like he would have been pretty good. Like a lot of movies it does lose it all in the end, with hopeless deus ex machina repeatedly. Maybe they ran out of money for the screenwriter.
For under $8, Mark, watch it for the giggles. What the hell.
Personally, I thought that was one of those movies that was so bad it was good. I try to convince myself that it was way more tongue-in-cheek than it really was, and that lets me enjoy it.
Once again, this movie cannot hold a candle to Hawk the Slayer.
D&D is great. Watch the deleted scenes and note how they cut the ENTIRE STORY out of the movie. It’s worth having purely for the line “Just like you thieves. Always taking things that don’t belong to you.”
I imagine that Courtney Solomon woke up every morning to find rotting fish nailed to his trailer door.
Ok, but have any of you watched the documentary on adventure games that’s on the DVD? I know the movie’s bad – I’ve seen parts on TV. I’m just curious about the documentary which I assume is about D&D.
It was indeed stupid, but it gets serious style points for casting Richard O’Brien (aka Riff Raff in Rocky Horror Picture Show, who also wrote the play of the same name). My wife and I kept signing “Let’s do the time warp again” every time he made a screen appearance.
Those long winter nights must simply fly by.
My apologies to Mark for seriously (and apparently permanently) derailing this thread. Sorry Mark! Boy does this film suck!
Richard O’Brien’s the BOMB in Ever After, yo!
And in Rocky Horror, of course. Damn it, now I have to see bloody D&D :(
As a service to you, Mark, I just went and rewatched the History of Adventure Games documentary, since I had no recollection of it. It’s interviews with people involved in the movie and WoTC guys interspersed with clips from the movie. Funniest part:
Geeky Movie Producer: I started playing D&D when I was 12 (blah blah)…
Geeky WoTC Guy: I started playing in 1977 (blah blah)…
Geeky Movie Director: I had D&D sleepovers when I was 12 (blah blah)…
Really Good Looking Lead Actor from the Movie: I never actually played D&D until I went to GenCon to promote the movie and got to play with Gary Gygax. It was fun.
Basically it’s recollections from a bunch of geeks and explaining what D&D is to people who have never even heard of it before. There is footage of the unveiling of D&D 3.0, which is mildly interesting.
If you’re buying the DVD for this, don’t bother.
I liked the “dwarf” who was basically a short guy who hunched over alot.
It had some potential …
Someone mentioned Hawk The Slayer, I’m afraid to actually track that movie (along with the various Beastmasters, DragonSlayer, Legend, etc) because I know that I’ll be very disappointed that they’re nothing close to what I remember.
I picked up Hawk the Slayer on DVD over the holidays and believe me, it’s still a classic.