Pass the mushrooms and the lembas bread, members of our bold fellowship! Our grand and glorious quest “In Search of Dungeons and Dragons” draws to its dramatically dramatic and epically epic close as we brave the barrows of the wights, the gates of Barad-dur, and the bathrooms of the Prancing Pony to discuss Peter Jackson’s “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy. Surely we can cover over 11 hours of movies in one episode, right? Right up there with Robert E. Howard’s “Conan”, “Lord of the Rings is one of the clearest influences on D&D, so much so that TSR, um, “borrowed” (without permission) many of the elements of the books for the game (hobbits, ents, orcs, etc). So, this should be a movie that truly captures the essence of the game . . . or does it? Listen and find out; also, at the end of this episode, we reveal which movie of this series best captures the sense of being a D&D Adventurer. We know the suspense must have been agonizing for you!
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Greetings from the declared Undying Lands! I know I’m a bit behind in listening, but I only just wrapped up this series and realized what movie you left off the list. It’s Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters. ( https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1428538/ ) This movie has it all, from mercenary motivations to multiple player characters to incredibly dumb callback jokes. I’m not saying that it’s a good movie, but a younger me (and, let’s face it, the current me) would be proud to call this a session I ran. It’s not a great film, but it still somehow managed to get Jeremy Renner in his post-MCU form, so it certainly had a lot behind it. Anyways, I loved the series!
Huh. You know, I’ve seen that movie but didn’t even consider it for this series…. and yet it really does work! A brace of adventurers show up to a town plagued by supernatural creatures that no one else can fight and agree to deal with them for a price. That’s some straight-up D&D stuff right there. Good call, young squire!