Post
March 19th, 2023, 8:12 pm
Dungeons and Dragons, Honor Among Thieves, 2023.
Em and I went to see the movie, so here is my perspective on it. I completely disregarded any of the Hasbro/WotC drama going on, had no bias going into the film based on current events. I legitimately thought the trailer looked entertaining and was hoping it was a fun D&D themed movie to watch. Em really liked the movie, she kept talking about it and I was glad to have spent some quality time with her in something related to the hobby/game. Even if I'm not playing the D&D brand, it still sparked her imagination and she's young enough and ignorant to anything behind the scenes in the hobby. It was refreshing to see her clap or shout out when certain things happened on the screen.
That being said, if you want to see some signature "D&D" aspects, the movie absolutely delivers. From typical D&D monsters, to class abilities and spells, there is no lacking in what they put into the film, although I do wish some of the more basic monsters (kobolds, goblins, gnolls, etc.) might have been present or showcased in some fashion, but it's a minor quibble. The film is set in the Forgotten Realms setting and many mentions of various locations were made. Personally, I think this could have been a chance to show off Greyhawk, but I guess WotC has moved on from Gary's original setting and feel the Realms are just more popular. All of this I enjoyed watching in the film.
However, even with all of that, I would say that on a scale of 1-5, I would have to give this a 3, possibly even leaning down towards a 2. The reasons for this are varied. Some of what I mention might spoil come scenes, so read or not depending on whether you care.
First off, the overall story was, imo, just bad. It was this weird amalgam of character backstories and random overarching plots that tried to appear cohesive but really weren't; it felt like a poorly developed adventure by an amateur DM. Now, it could be argued that, because of these reasons, it's the perfect "D&D" movie, because in some ways it felt like someone's idea for a home made adventure, but for an actual movie, it could have been much better.
The characters were fine for a "party", you have a bard, barbarian, druid, sorcerer and paladin; for NPCs you have Red Wizards of Thay and then plenty of typical 0-level fighter types.
Chris Pine plays Ed the Bard and overall, does a good job with the character, coming off as sarcastic, humorous, and witty. Essentially the brains behind the group and the primary reason everything happens in the film. He's like Hannibal Smith from The-A-Team.
Michelle Rodriguez plays Holga the Barbarian and isn't a bad actress, pulling off the character well enough, but I think either the directing or production of the character was somewhat off. As a barbarian, you expect to see the rage and such when fighting is going on. She has plenty of fight scenes, but you never really get the feeling of rage, it's just your typical hollywood action fighting, there's no build up or explosive point where she just goes off and then has to recuperate. The character does channel the "dumb barbarian" trope, which comes out in a few different scenes. The most offensive aspect of her character is the backstory in which she was kicked out of her tribe, because she fell in love with an outsider. Seems plausible enough, until you find out her previous "husband" is a halfling. Without going into details, they are reunited later in the film, and the entire scene is just awkward and bad, which I'll elaborate more in later.
I liked the sorcerer character, Simon, played by Justin Smith, I think the actor did a great job and I liked seeing the character develop, but what I didn't like was the weird relationship the character has with the druid. His character comes off as this real submissive and overly pathetic puppy dog, chasing after the druid character (which is one of the least likeable characters, imo). One of the best scenes for this character though, is when he gets into a mage duel with the main, female Thay wizard near the end. Another bad directing call, was having Simon automatically know about a magic item, without any study or spell casting, he just instinctively knew what it was. That wasn't on the character or actor, that was lack of, or indifference to, game mechanics/knowledge.
The worst two characters for me, were the druid, played by Sophia Lillis, and the paladin, played by Regererai Page. The one thing I will say, is that I don't think the problems I had with the characters were due to the actress and actor, but again, part of just really bad directing and production.
First off, the druid character's name is Doric. I don't know who came up with this, but it's just one of the worst druid sounding names ever. Second, the druid is a tiefling druid, who happens to be part of the Emerald Enclave, which is the big FR druid organization. Why would a half-demon, care anything about "nature" in any real way. Like, I get in 5e, any race, any character, but come on, this was just poorly developed. And the druid never really did anything druidic, except make some comments about how humans suck because of deforestation. The only thing this character did throughout the entire film, was shape change into different creatures, ranging from a fly and mouse, up to horse and an owlbear. The actress had this weird, stoic expression the entire time, like she was devoid of emotion in many ways, but spoke like she was a human, not even an accent of any sort for the character. Aside from having "horns and tail", there was nothing about this character that expressed "half-demon".
The paladin, Xenk of all names, was less offensive, but still not great. The worst thing I can say about the character (not the actor, who did a fine job for what he was given), is that they portrayed the paladin as the absolute most stero-typical paladin that one could be, to the point of being over the top. The character didn't know what sarcasm or metaphors were, and had very little humor. They took the meaning of walking the "straight and narrow" completely literal. The only other issue I had was the one big sword fight the paladin had with one of the Thay warriors. It looked like more of something akin to a light saber duel and had all the makings of something from modern films, lots of unrealistic flash and bang. The last thing I can think of is this scene where the paladin approaches a giant fish and lays a hand on it to calm it down, then opens it's mouth and pulls out a cat child. Like, literally, there is this feline NPC who's "kid" was swallowed by a giant fish and the paladin rescues it from inside the beast and returns it to the mother cat-person, which I assume is supposed to be a nod the the Tabaxi cat PCs in 5e. But the special effects and costumes for these characters just did not work, the cat-mom reminded me of something you'd see at Chuck-E-Cheese or the old Showbiz Pizza joints. And what sort of power does a paladin have to "calm" a giant fish, anyhow? It seemed very much, outside of what that character should be able to do. Not to mention, the paladin never once mentions a deity to which they serve. It just showed that the writers had no clue what they were writing.
The film also had quite a bit of humor interjected throughout, even at times when it just really wasn't necessary. There is such thing as too much comedy in a film that isn't really supposed to be a comedy film. At one point, the party encounters a dragon, and it was one of the worst characterizations of a dragon I've ever seen. The dragon was obese, like morbidly obese and looked like some sort of fat, reptilian cat running around chasing the characters. It did absolutely nothing to instill the awe and majesty of dungeon explorers encountering something that is a main staple of a game with the word Dragon in it's title.
The attempt at Halflings were one of the worst parts of the film. They tried to add halflings throughout, and really what you ended up with are normal humans that were quite literally, just shrunk down using some pretty bad camera and green screen work. There was ZERO attempt to make halflings anything more than a shorter, skinnier human. No hobbit-esque traits to be found.
There was only one scene with a dwarf character and it was short lived. There was a surprise appearance of the D&D cartoon characters, minus Uni the unicorn, which was kinda funny to see.
There was a scene where the party is trying to glean info about a magic item location by speaking with the dead, this ended up being comedic, like something I'd expect to see with Ash Williams from Army of Darkness. It was pretty funny and I did laugh at some of the banter, but again, it doesn't really evoke the undead aspects that most players would be accustomed to.
All in all, I didn't hate the movie, but I wouldn't say it captures the spirit of the D&D game that I, as an older player, would like to have seen. It's more of a fantasy-comedy, in the vein of the Princess Bride, with D&D tropes thrown in. My suggestion is to wait until it hits a streaming service and watch it when nothing else more interesting is on. It's not a waste of time, but it's not something I would revisit again.
“He found himself wondering at times, especially in the autumn, about the wild lands, and strange visions of mountains that he had never seen came into his dreams.” - Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien
