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.
