Elmofongo: This new Dungeons & Dragons will be a Guardians of the Galaxy-tone movie in a Tolkien-like universe." Lee would go on to say that the film will have the "earnestness" of The Lord of the Rings but will feel closer to a "romp" akin to [Raiders of the Lost Ark]. "I feel [that's] something the audience has not seen before."
Which is ridiculous because it's
exactly what the audience has seen before, in those movies. If you try to make a movie that's a derivative mash-up of those movies (as opposed to something that's actually original), what you'll get is a derivative mash-up of those movies, and it's going to come across as being a pale imitation of all three.
I loved LOTR, and Raiders, and GOTG remains one of my favorite Marvel Phase II movies. Those movies all worked (IMO) because they actually put effort into to doing something original. If you're going to try to ape all of those for a D&D movie, it'll just come across as being like a bad Aslyum mockbuster at best, and something on the level of the simply awful 2000 movie at worst.
Elmofongo: Why not just have the complete tone of the Lord of the Rings/Hobbit movies?
Or hell Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights, The SSI Goldbox games?
Or if you want that light hearted comedic tone, take notes from the First 2 Harry Potter movies?
They could even do something meta like have the plot revolve around a group of friends playing through the game (like Freaks and Geeks) - that way they could do something more character-driven, where we get to see the party and their real-life equivalents grow and change as they progress through the campaign. Even take a little bit of inspiration from the HP movies and make it a series, where we follow the group from a young age and into middle/high-school and beyond.
My goodness talk about following a trend in movies :P
I remember hearing somewhere (either in a RLM or Jimquisition episode) that Hollywood is very good at identifying successful trends, but it's not very good at capitalizing on them. Movies that were more self-aware and less-serious -- like Iron Man, Ant-Man, GOTG and now *Deadpool -- did really well. Movies that tried to go the superserious route, like Fantastic Four 2015, didn't. The problem is that being either superserious or lighthearted can work really well for a Superhero/SFF movie; the key is understanding your source material well enough to know what kind of tone fits it best.
I'm not saying you can't make a DnD movie lighthearted. But for the love of God, don't weigh the movie down with "smart" one-liners, stilted "edgy" humor, or insulting fart/poop/sex jokes in the name of making it "more fun".
*And as a sidenote, With Deadpool it's also worrying in that we may see more people trying to ape Deadpool with rated-R humor and fourth-wall breaking, in movies where that wouldn't fit at all.
