Dungeons & Dragons is one of the most iconic pieces of fantasy media ever created. It draws on tropes from genre classics and has influenced the tropes of many more. However, Dungeons & Dragons campaigns have a very particular feel to them. They’re not polished tales created by trained writers.

Instead, D&D campaigns tend towards a lighter, more chaotic tone. A group of players is given total freedom with their goals, tastes, and ideas. This is unlike many fantasy movies. However, fans don’t need to wait for Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves to see a similar tone. Many fantasy movies feel just like tabletop gaming sessions.

Updated January 22, 2024 by Robert Vaux: Dungeons & Dragons has taken inspiration from a number of classic high fantasy movies, more than 10 of which deserve mention on this list. Five new entries have been added, along with a discussion of their parallels with D&D. In addition, the article has been updated to match current CBR guidelines.

15 Big Trouble in Little China Matches D&D Gameplay in Surprising Ways.

On the surface, Big Trouble in Little China has little to do with Dungeons & Dragons, with a modern setting and a wuxia-inspired action plot. But the movie’s fantasy underworld looks very similar to caverns and passageways D&D characters encounter, along with all manner of deadly traps, powerful magic, and strange monsters. It also entails a group of protagonists who band together to stop an undead tyrant from ruling the universe and rescue a beautiful maiden from his clutches in the bargain.

But the real parallels to D&D come with its central joke: treating its hero like a sidekick and its sidekick like a hero. Kurt Russell’s overconfident Jack Burton bumbles his way through most of the movie, while Dennis Dun’s Wang Chi single-handedly takes out entire squads of minions with nothing but his bare hands. It aptly matches combat in D&D — where a few bad die rolls can leave a player’s character looking a lot like Jack — and Honor Among Thieves viewers will recognize the dynamic during Ed and Holga’s escape from execution.

14 The Pirates Of The Caribbean Movies Capture D&D’s Swashbuckling Side

When it comes to mainstream fantasy films, few are more chaotic than the Pirates of the Caribbean series. It follows rogues, lawmen, and bystanders, all attempting to come out on top with their own schemes. The films prioritize entertainment and comedy over strait-laced seriousness, which matches the tone of many D&D games.

Pirates of the Caribbean is unpredictable, zany, and vastly entertaining. In these regards, it resembles a great many D&D campaigns. The unlikely outcomes feel like very low or very high dice rolls. The antics of its characters can resemble chaotic neutral adventurers. The first trilogy’s structure even feels like a D&D campaign, with a series of challenges and dangers interspersed with monsters and buried treasure. Standalone adventures build up to an epic final confrontation that ties things together.

13 Wonder Woman Brings Fantasy into the 20th Century

Wonder Woman is one of the DCEU‘s most fantastical films. An Amazon warrior leaves her hidden magical island to assist the Allies in the First World War. Where her contemporaries wear uniforms and wield guns, Diana Prince uses swords, armor, and a shield to win her battles. She also follows the traditional steps of mythic heroes: leading her home to journey through a new world in pursuit of a quest to stop a great evil.

Obviously, the First World War setting is atypical for a D&D game. However, the rest of Wonder Woman suits its tone. A highly specialized team goes behind enemy lines to save millions from an unstoppable power. They rise through the levels of evil until they battle a god. Most D&D campaigns would have less of a power difference than between Diana and her allies, but everything else is very close.

12 Alice in Wonderland Finds a D&D-Style Quest for Lewis Carroll’s Characters

On the surface, the classic Alice in Wonderland story isn’t well-suited to a D&D game: being the adventures of a single character through a landscape that deliberately follows no set rules. However, its 2010 reimagining makes it feel much more like a campaign. Alice in Wonderland features an out-of-place heroine fighting through an evil ruler’s tyranny. With unlikely allies and strange powers, she succeeds against all odds.

Alice in Wonderland is even the source of one of D&D‘s best magic weapons, the Vorpal Sword. It’s first mentioned in Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky poem and is Alice’s weapon of choice. Its tone may be too esoteric and nonsensical for many games. Even then, however, D&D‘s Feywild takes clear inspiration from Wonderland. And a pair of classic adventure modules from the 1980s — Dungeonland and The Land Beyond the Magic Mirror — directly parallel Carroll’s original text.

11 The Mummy Balances Humor and Drama Like D&D

Every D&D campaign has its own tone. Few groups play the game in an entirely serious and dark manner. Likewise, most don’t spend the entire thing laughing and cracking jokes. Most tables strike a balance between the two. One of the best films for balancing these atmospheres is The Mummy.

The Mummy‘s villain is genuinely horrifying. His resurrection, abilities, and scheme are all near-perfect for a D&D campaign. However, the film is as much a comedy as a horror. It showcases the perfect time to break the tension with a joke and the right time to be horrified by the DM’s descriptions.

10 Willow Is a Classic High Fantasy Quest

Few films are as well-suited to D&D as Willow. It’s a surprisingly earnest fantasy adventure in a bright world full of strange phenomena. It has a simple main goal that becomes complicated by endless obstacles. This is similar to the structure of a great many D&D campaigns. The one-and-done problems and solutions that crop up in Willow could be entire D&D sessions.

Willow‘s atmosphere is also similar to many D&D groups. The film isn’t trying to be a self-aware parody or pastiche. It just uses common fantasy tropes to make an earnest, heartfelt story. This is many groups’ experience of D&D. It gives them a chance to express themselves and their tastes without snark or a need to be clever.

9 The Chronicles Of Narnia Embraces Bands of Heroes on a Journey

The Chronicles of Narnia isn’t as omnipresent as The Lord of the Rings, but it is still a foundational fantasy text. In many ways, it’s also closer to a classic D&D game. The stories are often less grand and epic in scale. The bulk of most Narnia novels follows small groups traveling on quests.

The base Chronicles of Narnia plot would be a strange D&D campaign. Most don’t follow real-world people thrown into fantasy worlds. However, the simple exposition and worldbuilding echo how many DMs introduce their settings. Dungeon Masters could also do worse than echo Narnia books’ building of tension and scale as the story progresses.

8 Jason and the Argonauts Turns Greek Mythology into a D&D Adventure

Ray Harryhausen delighted in applying his stop-motion gifts to works of classical mythology, which held all manner of monsters to bring to life. Jason and the Argonauts remains one of his signature films, and its story of a ship full of heroes in search of the Golden Fleece. Each island brings a new challenge, ranging from monster attacks to clashing rocks that threaten to tear their ship to pieces.

While Harryhausen’s later film Clash of the Titans reveals in similar fare, it’s largely a one-hero production. Jason and The Argonauts has more of a team feeling reminiscent of D&D, and while the titular protagonist takes the lead, he’s far from alone. It even has a named hero — Hercules — who quite literally leaves for a side-quest midway through: a move performed in countless D&D campaigns when a given player can’t make the session. (Honor Among Thieves has a similar figure in Regé-Jean Page’s snooty paladin Xenk Yendar.)

7 Raya and the Last Dragon Delivers an Asian Fantasy Adventure

Dungeons & Dragons is primarily inspired by Western fantasy storytelling. It draws on many sources from British and American authors, and European cultural folklore. However, it is by no means restricted to this genre. With the right tools and knowledge, a group can take inspiration from folklore and fantasy anywhere in the world.

Raya and the Last Dragon draws on Southeast Asian culture and folklore. It feels no less like a Dungeons & Dragons campaign because of this. Its tone, characters, and plot could all happen on a tabletop between a group of friends.

6 Dragonslayer Upends Classic Fantasy Conventions

Dragonslayer is a cult classic from the 1980s, made during D&D’s early heyday and reflecting a good deal of self-awareness in the process. While it takes its fairy-tale story deadly seriously, it subtly reverses many of the expected cliches. Politics and public relations play as big a part as swords and sorcery, and many of the villains have surprisingly strong moral compasses.

Above all, it has a deep-set respect for the kind of high fantasy D&D thrives on, as a sorcerer’s apprentice takes on the seemingly impossible task of slaying a dragon after his master is killed. Fantasy TTRPGers will recognize a lot in his adventures, which don’t turn out quite the way he expects.

5 Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon Embraces Wuxia Heroics

Director Ang Lee designed Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon as a love letter to the wuxia stories of his youth, and delivers a modern masterpiece in the process. At its heart is a tragic romance, as two honored warriors choose duty over their hearts, but it’s also a rollicking adventure filled with bandits, magicians, astonishing martial powers and a magic sword at the heart of it all.

Like Raya and The Last Dragon, Crouching Tiger takes a resolutely Asian approach to D&D-style adventures. It feels no less of a kind for it — there’s even a barroom fight in the middle of it all — and its disparate collection of protagonists are just contentious enough to make a classic D&D party.

4 The Princess Bride Perfects the Art of Intra-Party Banter

The Princess Bride remains the gold standard in comedy-adventure films. Its iconic moments, witty dialogue, and delightful antics have delighted generations of audiences. The film’s silly scenes feel precisely like what players and their beleaguered DM might come up with at a moment’s notice.

As with many fantasy films, The Princess Bride follows a group of unlikely allies, each with their own specialties. This is particularly reminiscent of D&D, with classes made to fill roles in a party. Many players have succeeded in recreating The Princess Bride‘s Inigo Montoya, Westley, and Fezzik within the game’s rules.

3 Stardust Captures D&D’s Rollicking Chaos

Dungeons & Dragons campaigns often have to juggle genres. No two players will have identical tastes. Some want nothing more than heroic action. Others seek intrigue or exploration. Others still want to tell stories of tragedy or romance. A DM has their work cut out trying to fit all of these stories into one campaign.

Stardust manages this with aplomb. It’s sometimes a grand epic and sometimes a personal and intimate tale. Some scenes are horrifying, and others are hilarious. Different characters each have their story with unique themes and genres. Few films mix everything that might crop up in a D&D campaign like Stardust.

2 Conan the Barbarian Inspired the Creation of D&D

Dungeons & Dragons always drew considerable inspiration from Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories, which he wrote for pulp magazines in the 1930s. They often focus on D&D staples such as forgotten tombs and collapsed temples, often containing hideous monsters that Conan must brave in search of fabulous treasure (which he often loses as quickly as he gains.)

The 1982 movie adaptation captures a great deal of that spirit, and indeed before The Lord of the Rings trilogy, it was the go-to example of swords-and-sorcery on film. Scenes like the raid on the Temple of Set — where Conan and his friends fight a giant snake in pursuit of a priceless jewel — could be pulled straight out of a D&D session.

1 The Lord of the Rings Is a Masterpiece of High Fantasy

No fantasy work is more seminal than The Lord of the Rings. Its world, plot, villains, heroes, and more have inspired almost every work in the genre that comes after. This includes D&D. The Lord of the Rings isn’t the game’s only inspiration. However, it is one of the most prominent, and the game has always won Tolkien’s influence proudly on its sleeve. As such, it’s natural that The Lord of the Rings films feel suited to D&D.

The Fellowship of the Ring has inspired countless D&D characters. Many villains follow in Sauron’s footsteps. Quests to retrieve or escort powerful artifacts are common campaign stories. Many have pointed out that The Lord of the Rings films would themselves make a poor D&D campaign. However, almost every DM aspires to create something as epic and timeless as the trilogy.