I’d heard that Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves was a brilliant homage to the classic Fantasy Role-Playing Game, full of easter eggs and fun and great action and lovely bits and bobs.
I’d also heard that Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves was a scattershot fantasy action that had some nice minutes but awful quarter-hours, with an incoherent plot, poorly sketched characters, and little for a non-player of the game to latch onto.
Which have I learned is the truth here?
Yes.
For someone who’s been immersed in D&D since the early 80s, D&DHAT is so steeped in lore and in-jokes and setting that it all begins to precipitate out like a passing, meaningless shot of rust monsters arguing over a scrap of metal. From funny spells to dire threats to factions to cities to name-drops of famous figures throughout the history of Faerun, D&DHAT tries to out-LotR LotR in its eye to detail and endless, endless fan service.
And, heck, I’d love to make it a table requirement that every player in a new game of mine watch that movie as a means of setting tone for the sort of game I want to run.
At the same time, desperately taking a step or three back, the movie is something of a narrative mess, from flashing back in sometimes confusing fashion, to throwing new obstacles and perils in just because they are cool, not because they are needed or pay off. Things happen, jokes are japed, battles ensue, banter is banted, the heroes win by the skin of their teeth, and we move on without any meaningful consideration of what it all meant. In a very real way, that’s the worst part of D&D, an endless series of Random Encounter Table rolls, with only the most threadbare plot to go with.
Alongside that threadbare plot are characters whom we root for because they are the characters we are clearly meant to root for, and who have backstories that, with maybe one exception, are simply sketched in, hand-waved, and thrown into the action. It’s less the stereotypical “Let me share with you my novella about my character’s origins (the index is on the last five pages)” and more a Pick-Up Group’s depth.
Even the main character — Chris Pine’s Edgin — who gets more backstory time than all the other characters combined, is such a fast-talking nobody that all the dramatic beats that the movie pretends to provide — love, loss, self-sacrifice, parenting, oath-breaking, regret, redemption — feel rushed and shallow in order to get to the next incredibly geeky-cool action moment.
The acting is all fine for the roles (one of these days, Hugh Grant is going to wake up and realize he’s been a laundry list of character actors over the decades), the SFX are quite good, the attention to lore is astounding (see your reviewer squealing “OMG IT’S GRASSY FIELDS OF THE DESSARIN VALLEY!!!!!”), and I had a tremendous amount of fun watching it. The Rotten Tomatoes scores for critics and viewers were both highly respectable.
But this is not a great movie. This is not even a great fantasy movie (compared to, say the Lord of the Rings trilogy — indeed, one might easily argue it’s a bit more The Hobbit trilogy in tone and content). I enjoyed it, and it’s arguably the best D&D movie I’ve watched since Conan the Destroyer (1982). But the folk who were surprised that it didn’t do better in theaters shouldn’t be: I strongly expect that, were I not someone steeped in D&D myself, I’d not be nearly as likely to have watched it, nor to want to watch it again.
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