Even though some of Community's best episodes came from the group playing a rousing game of paintball or playing the fantasy game of Dungeons and Dragons, show creator Dan Harmon has confirmed that the upcoming cinematic follow-up to the show will not have either involved.
With the movie now greenlit, details are starting to trickle out regarding who is in it and what the Community movie will be about. While things remain only in the beginning stages, Harmon has revealed that the show will not revisit elements that put it on the map as one of the funniest shows of its era.
While being interviewed on Six Seasons and a Podcast (via Newsweek), Harmon confirmed to host Alex Burdine that the movie would not be visiting paintball as it did during its run. "Do we really think that it would be a good idea for the Community movie to be a paintball episode? I think that's one of the first things to kind of rule out," Harmon said. Newsweek also relayed that Harmon confirmed that the movie will not be a full-length Dungeons and Dragons episode. "Harmon also ruled out the movie being a "Dungeons and Dragons" game for 90 minutes, something which was performed twice within the show's run." Harmon also elaborated on why they wouldn't revisit such themes again. "An issue with the Community movie concept is that we did a lot of episodes where from page 1 to page 30, you are joyfully locked in a construct that isn't a traditional sitcom narrative, but it's rather through the lens of David Fincher or Scorsese or, more importantly, through the lens of one of the character's perceptions."
During its six-year run, Community has four episodes dedicated to paintball. Season 1 had "Modern Warfare," Season 2 had "A Fistful of Paintballs" and "For a Few Paintballs More," and Season 6 had "Modern Espionage." The show had two episodes dedicated to Dungeons and Dragons. Season 2 had "Advanced Dungeons and Dragons," and Season 5 had "Advanced Advanced Dungeons and Dragons." Community's reputation as a show heightened drastically due to some of these episodes. In fact, it was Season 2's two-part paintball-themed that convinced Disney to hire the Russo brothers as the director for their Marvel movies.
Harmon deserves praise for not revisiting old formulas because being repetitive can come off as lazy. Just because it worked in a 22-minute format does not mean it will work in a 90-minute format. Sure, Community revisited formulas because they worked in the past, but when they did, they didn't follow the same beats as the first go-round. More importantly, Harmon is one of the most creative comedy minds in Hollywood. If he feels that a movie would work under something completely new, he's earned the benefit of the doubt both from his efforts from Community and Rick and Morty.
But this does beg the question of how Community will approach this movie because of how different a film can be compared to a show. Are they going to parody a genre or a movie, or are they going to apply a theoretical metaphysical concept as they did in the episode "Remedial Chaos Theory?" What helps them is that the show really had no bounds to what they could do when they were on despite that it was not an adults-only comedy.
The Community movie will be streamed on Peacock.