Pages

Monday, July 17, 2023

Obligatory Monty Python Reference

Film: Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
Format: DVD from Cortland Public Library on rockin’ flatscreen.

I am an old-school gamer. I have an original box set Dungeons & Dragons from the 1970s, a ton of books and, as far as I know, the largest private collection of GURPS (Generic Universal Role Playing System) books in the state of Illinois. For a long time, tabletop RPGs were the premier nerd hobby and looked down on by everyone, but now it’s gone mainstream. People who are cool play D&D, and ironically, I no longer have a lot of time for it. However, even though I’m not as involved as I used to be, I still worried about the release of Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. This is despite a cast that includes Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, and Hugh Grant.

The worry, I think, was pretty well founded. D&D has not done well in mainstream media, starting from the terrible Tom Hanks movie of decades ago to the quickly curtailed Saturday morning cartoon show to the three (yes, there were three of them) movies from the previous two decades. So with a new movie coming out, with a budget, and with the real possibility of being as terrible as the one from 2000, I had some serious concerns.

Here's the blunt truth: Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (which I’m going to call D&D: HAT from this point on) doesn’t want to be or try to be a great movie in the classic sense. It’s not even that concerned with being a good movie, which it is. What it wants to be, and where it wildly succeeds, is in being a fun movie, and a movie that genuinely respects the gamers and nerds who are going to both make up the core audience and are also going to be the most critical.

The plot feels like a D&D group’s quest. A bard named Edgin (Chris Pine) spent time working as a Harper, a sort of do-gooder who acts as a spy. Tired of doing good and getting nothing for it, he decides to become a criminal after a group of evil wizards kill his wife. Edgin teams up with a barbarian named Holga (Michelle Rodriguez), a mildly incompetent sorcerer named Simon (Justice Smith), and a thief named Forge (Hugh Grant), and raising his young daughter Kira (Chloe Colman) on the road. Eventually, the group teams up with a wizard named Sofina (Daisy Head) to rob the group that Edgin once worked for. His goal is to retrieve a talisman that would allow him to resurrect his wife. But, Edgin and Holga are captured and sent to prison. When the movie starts, they escape, and soon discover that Forge is now a man of immense power, and has been continuing to raise Kira while Edgin is away. It’s not going to be a shock that we soon find out that Forge set everyone up and that Sofina is the mastermind behind all of it. And so we have our motivation and plot.

Any gamer will tell you that a big part of any campaign is getting the party together, so Edgin and Holga find Simon and then complete the party with Doric (Sophia Lillis), a nature priest who can turn into animals and who is the object of Simon’s unrequited love. And from here, it’s about bringing Forge to justice and saving the day, just like a typical D&D campaign.

D&D: HAT does some critically important things right. The biggest thing is that it manages to present something that hits a lot of points for an experienced D&D fan without alienating audience members who have never rolled a D20. I’m nerd enough to know when I’m seeing someone cast Otiluke’s Resilient Sphere or Evard’s Black Tentacles, but these show up without being called out. A fan knows what they are, but the non-fan just sees a cool spell effect. The same is true of seeing displacer beasts, mimics, owlbears, and a gelatinous cube. It’s just a thing for the non-fan, but for the gamer, it’s a nod to the hobby.

It also feels like a gaming session. There are little throwaway lines that feel like the sort of thing a gamer would say around the table. Plans fail and get cobbled, and magic items get used in ways that are interesting because that’s what the players do. For the casual viewer, it’s a movie, but for the gamer, they see themselves in plans failing and being reworked.

And that’s the genius here. D&D: HAT didn’t care if it was great or good. It wanted to be true to the fans and still accessible for the non-fans. It wanted to be fun. And because it is, it is good, and in a fan sense, it is great. I had a lot of fun watching this, and I hope there are more of them.

Why to watch Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves: It’s what D&D movies should have been all along.
Why not to watch: A few more meta moments/references wouldn’t hurt.

8 comments:

  1. I have been avoiding these movies out of principle. I just knew they were bad. Yet this sounds good and I will try to seek it out.
    It has been three decades since I played these games. I was always a lot more interested in the worlds than the actual game and had big maps of fictional worlds hanging on my wall and even an atlas of Middle earth with geomorphology and geology explained. So gaming ended but eventually I became a geologist myself.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. This movie has nothing to do with the trilogy (I can't believe there was actually a trilogy) of D&D films from a few years ago. It's an entirely separate project, and it's all the better for it.

      Delete
  2. I've heard a lot of praise towards the film for the fact that it never takes itself seriously and it is a lot of fun. I hope to check it out on a streaming service soon.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's handled exactly the way it should be. It legitimately feels like a gaming session, just with all of the Holy Grail references removed.

      Delete
  3. I'm in agreement here, this movie was a ton of fun. My son says it's one of his all time favorites now. I just didn't expect to laugh as much as I did.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yep. I enjoyed the entire thing. I hope it becomes a series and we get one every couple of years.

      Delete
  4. Me too. Really enjoyed it, spotted some of the D&D references, and had a lot of fun. The good cast, who were obviously having a great time, really sold it. I also hope they make more of these.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Absolutely. Michelle Rodriguez is the best part of this, and there are a lot of really good parts of this. A joy all the way around.

      Delete