- Starring
- Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Regé-Jean Page
- Directors
- John Francis Daley and Johnathan Goldstein
- Rating
- PG-13
- Genre
- Action, Adventure, Fantasy
- Release date
- March 31, 2023
Overall Score
Rating Overview
Rating Summary
Full disclosure: I started playing Dungeons & Dragons last century when Advanced Dungeons & Dragons was still the newest version of the game. So, get ready for a very nerdy review…like it’s amazing that I have a wife and children kind of nerdy. You’ve been warned.
Dungeons & Dragons: A Brief History
First dreamed up by Gary Gygax and David Arneson, Dungeons & Dragons, the game, has been bringing the fantasies of basement-dwelling virgins to life since 1974. Almost since its inception, the tabletop role-playing game that uses polyhedra dice to determine the efficacy of player decisions has been steeped in controversy. In the late 70s and early 80s, a series of tragic events wrongfully blamed on the game tainted its reputation for decades.
It wasn’t until Wizards of The Coast (a subsidiary of Hasbro) purchased the game in 1997, that it began to work its way into mainstream culture. Since then, there have been three Dungeons & Dragons feature-length films (only the first of which was shown in theatres). After the devastation experienced by me and many of my fellow nerds at the travesty that was 2000’s Dungeons & Dragons (staring Jeremy Irons), we’d all but given up hope that anyone would ever pick up the reigns and try again to bring our beloved game to the silver screen.
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
Let me start off by saying that, simply based on the pedigree (or lack thereof) of its directors, it’s amazing that this film isn’t Cocaine Bear levels of crap. Seriously, how did two guys who have only co-directed two other feature-length films (one of which was the blistering boil known as Vacation) get picked to helm a $151 million movie with aspirations of launching an entire special effects-laden action-adventure film franchise? The fact that Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is generally entertaining is nothing short of a miracle.
With north of adequate pacing, acceptable special effects, and mostly serviceable performances, the latest attempt to bring Dungeons & Dragons to life on the big screen is fun, if little more. Nevertheless, there are a few moments that audiences will enjoy but roleplayers will absolutely love when they recognize them from their own campaigns.
The performances mostly range from serviceable to good, with Chris Pine playing charming Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez doing a serviceable job of playing a role clearly originally written for a large muscular man, and most of the rest of the cast not being distractingly bad. Having the closest thing to a standout performance, Hugh Grant makes it all look very easy, and it’s a bit distracting how much better he is than everyone else. Between this and his turn in the pitiful excuse for a Guy Ritchie film, Operation Fortune, it makes me wish that he’d been more discreet about his youthful hooker-banging proclivities so that we could have enjoyed him in some more interesting pieces throughout the years.
Unfortunately, there is one actress who needs to be called on the carpet for her piss poor performance. Sophia Lillis plays the shape-shifting druid, Doric, and she’s just terrible. Capable of one-and-a-half facial expressions and even less vocal depth, she is an energy-sucking distraction any time she opens her mouth to speak, which is blessedly infrequent. What makes it most annoying is that her character is one of the coolest in the film.
In its effort to balance paying homage to game mechanics and the storytelling tropes of traditional D&D adventures as well as keeping pace with the realities of making a cogent and entertaining movie, D&D: HAT often alternates between pedantic nerd-porn and movie convenience MacGuffin (sometimes simultaneously). However, it does manage to mostly hold things together and keep the action and the audience moving from one set piece to the other without them taking regular glances at their watches.
That being said, the film’s greatest weakness is its generic and disposable plot and the fact that most of the set pieces feel contrived, with their only purpose being to move us to the next one. While generally speaking, that is their purpose in all adventure films and most assuredly in RPGs, it shouldn’t feel that way. Unlike a quality campaign run by a thoughtful Dungeon Master, D&D: HAT doesn’t make the adventuring party work to get from point A to point B.
If the party wouldn’t have arbitrarily taken a detour to visit Michelle Rodriguez’s ex, who just so happened to give her an item that just so happened to turn out (at the most convenient time) to be a MacGuffin that would literally take them from point A to point B, the movie would have been over multiple times. If one of the characters didn’t already happen to possess a MacGuffin that enables him to get needed information from an otherwise inaccessible source, the movie would have been over. If they wouldn’t have been able to easily find and recruit the help of an overpowered NPC, they wouldn’t have been able to continue their quest, and most of them would have died.
By doing this the audience is robbed of any real sense of accomplishment and deeper excitement than that which is garnered from the cast surviving a battle that we all knew that they would have anyway.
It’s time for nerd talk
One of Dungeons & Dragons’ greatest appeals is that players can be anything and anyone. It’s possible to play a three-foot-tall halfling with the strength of a giant and the ability to breathe fire. However, each of those features would have to be explained and make sense as per the copious rules of the game. By their very nature, halflings aren’t as naturally strong as larger creatures. Even with the most lenient of DM’s, the strongest halfling wouldn’t be able to match strength with the strongest human, unless that halfling had a magic item, or a spell, etc. that would boost his strength beyond its natural limits.
Michelle Rodriguez’s barbarian character, much like herself, is a 5′ 5″ 119 lbs human woman. Unlike Michelle, her character is able to toss around 200 lbs men wearing full metal armor so hard that they crumble stone walls on impact. Even if her character’s strength was maxed out at 20, that would take a perfect series of rolls, an act of random luck, and a questionable DM. Yet Rodriguez does it throughout the film.
From a purely cinematic perspective, it doesn’t work and looks ridiculous. If the filmmakers were adamant about having a tiny tiny woman in the role instead of Gwendoline Christie, or a huge man, all they had to do was say that her many arm tattoos bestowed her with extraordinary strength.
Bard is a Vocation, Not a Character Class
As a matter of principle, I’m opposed to the entire concept of a bard class. As a friend of mine recently said, “knight, wizard, priest…minstrel? One of these things doesn’t fit.” I find the idea of someone wanting to escape into a character whose main skill is being a musician in a game that is filled with liches, demigods, and the Tarrasque to be off putting in the least.
With that said, what the h3!! was Chris Pine’s character? They say that he’s a bard, and he does tote around and play the mandolin, but in Dungeons & Dragons, bards can fight, cast spells, and perform various thieving skills like hiding in shadows. Pine’s character makes plans and occasionally hits people with his musical instrument. The movie even makes a point on more than one occasion to point out how useless his character is. Unfortunately, making reference to something ridiculous in a film does not excuse it from being ridiculous. There is no good reason that his character couldn’t have been capable. His incompetence didn’t add any humor or benefit of any kind to the film.
Conclusion
It was nice to see so many elements of the game that I love so dearly taken seriously. It would have been nicer if good storytelling would have been taken as seriously. However, Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is a serviceable action-adventure fantasy that has laid the groundwork for far more talented people to pick up the franchise’s reigns and deliver something extra-special. Whether or not the producers will get out of the way long enough for that to happen, remains to be seen.
WOKE ELEMENTS
- The diversity for its own sake is off the charts. In a film based on a game based on European mythology and J.R. Tolkien’s Lord of The Rings, the main cast has two white guys.
- Every woman in the film is incredibly tough, smart, far more capable than any man in the film, and fully actualized with nothing to learn about themselves.
- Every man in the film is either useless, evil, selfish, a bad dad, or a bumbling and gross beta male who spends the movie on a journey to find confidence, etc. The one exception, of course, necessarily checks off one of Hollywood’s intersectional quota boxes. Furthermore, he is a paladin, which in the game is almost always some broad-shouldered and grizzled warrior but in this, he’s an overly primped and quaffed waif of a man who looks like he belongs in a CW drama.
James Carrick
James Carrick is a passionate film enthusiast with a degree in theater and philosophy. James approaches dramatic criticism from a philosophic foundation grounded in aesthetics and ethics, offering insight and analysis that reveals layers of cinematic narrative with a touch of irreverence and a dash of snark.
10 comments
formerRPGperson1
May 14, 2023 at 6:32 pm
It’s okay to be strong, smart, capable and heroic for god’s sake!
The f#@k!ing wokeness was off the charts and spoiled an otherwise entertaining fantasy flick. Jesus, give us some good heros you morons!
One thing you didn’t mention: The main storyline is total woke BS: A patchwork-family person that want’s to bring back the real family but has to “let it go” and in the end to be content with the substrate of the patchwork fake family. Yawn. Boring!
Spoiled D&D.
Wow am I surprised. Wokeness destroyed STAR WARS – no wonder it can do it with D&D.
I give this movie 3 fluffy pink bunnies out of 20 parallel universes.
Greetings to all real Pen&Paper Heros! Stay true to your ideals.
PS: Also since I didn’t play D&D (just a bunch of other RPGs) I thought throughout the whole movie that D&D had all these black & coloured peoples in their fantasy world. Shocking to hear that it wasn’t so.
In classic Fantasy most people are Whites. Get over it.
Dredd Martyr
May 23, 2023 at 10:03 pm
Couldn’t watch this movie more than 30 minutes into it. Been a D&D tabletop fan for the last four years and this movie is just an epic fantasy story with the D&D label poorly slapped on the cover.
I Love Michelle Rodriguez but I wasn’t sold on her incredible strength against much bigger/heavier foes. Probably could’ve used some of that fancy CGI and camera angling to make her look bigger since she was a barbarian of great strength.
I stopped since I can’t stand the commonality among recent Hollywoke films downsizing male leads to look like inferior, incapable buffoons fumbling over themselves with a strong, competent, fearless female holding them up. I mean, why the hell is the leading role portrayed as arguably the most incompetent at times and a bad father. That and he’s never confident in his decisions. UGH!
Chris Pine deserves better than the crap sandwich he’s fed since Wonder Woman. A wasted talent.
Perfect oppurtunity to put together an epic D&D tale that could’ve stretched across numerous films but no. Had to implant a woke script with powerful, confident and fearless female characters that overshadow every incompetent, unsure and emasculated male counterpart.
Thrall
June 1, 2023 at 3:23 pm
I think you are a bit too harsh with movies. or i overlook too much if i generally enjoy them.
Yeah it was lol what the barbarian woman did, but the whole setting was funny, i imagined she is a female version of Bud Spencer, also in DnD high leveled characters can do many things. You wrote, unlike males, women dont have to develop. I say men were more complex characters.
Tia
June 1, 2023 at 5:42 pm
As a casual fan of the game, I did enjoy the film. The female Barbaian bit, to me, felt more played for laughs than taken seriously (like a tongue in cheek mockery of the class), which 8s why it didn’t bother me too much. The Bard class, on the other hand, I was not impressed with how miserably wimpy the character seemed.
Overall, the most WOKE part of the film was the excessive (strangely so) diversity, which is probably the least bothersome type of wokeness. I also liked the lack of romance between the Bard and Barbarian. Overall, I’d probably have given the film a higher rating than you just because it was a bit of silly fun and I enjoyed it. But I’m enjoying reading through your reviews (I might actually check out the Terri’s movie based on your review).
Kane
June 2, 2023 at 3:52 pm
My two dollars (inflation adjusted):
The Humor: I hate Guardians of the Galaxy for the sole reason that it infected all future cinema with its brand of quippy humor. There is nothing wrong with humor in a serious film, and I think a lot of the humor in the movie works. Some, however, is forced, distractingly bad, and feels like it is only in the movie because it is expected at this point. Good examples of this are every joke in the backstory/Jarnathan scene (especially since THEY GOT PARDONED ANYWAY) and a lot of the grave scene.
Language:
I must say upfront that I am biased against language at all in movies. My preferred amount is zero. However, if your movie is going to have language, it needs to fit and not feel gratuitous. Extra points if it moves the plot forward. A good example of language done well is Rhett Butler’s “Frankly, my dear” scene from Gone with the Wind. It flows, suits his character, isn’t overused, and accentuates the point the scene is driving at. A bad example is every vulgar phrase in this movie. It seems as if the writers are kids who just learned the words “s***” and “b****”, among others, and feel the need to shove them everywhere. It’s distracting and, frankly, bad writing.
The People Groups: While it was always anachronistic for a European mythology franchise, cultures are where the diverse casting becomes a major problem even in a vacuum. The main issue is that there is no consistency in the racial makeup of the different groups. You have a tribe of mostly white barbarians, but with a Latino member. You have Thayans that are majority white but with inexplicable blacks like Xenk. You have humans that can be white or black or anything in between. It makes no sense. At most, if you really wanted diverse ethnicities, you could have made the barbarians all Latino, the elves all black, and the men all white. It still wouldn’t have made a ton of sense given the source material and the small geographic area in which they live, but at least it would be more consistent. Now, however, there is nothing visually common to the groups that keeps them unified. It wouldn’t hurt to have a colored character or two among the men, just explain that they are travelers from the South or East or something, but the majority must be white. The Thayans need to be white. The barbarians and elves must all be of the same ethnicity. If you want the barbarians to be Latino, fine. But they all have to be. If you want the elves to be black, fine. But they all have to be. At least that would consistently allow Simon to be mixed. Alternatively, all could be white like the source material.
The Main Cast:
Forge: Forge is cast and played to near perfection. I have nothing to say about him.
Sofina: Again, she is cast and played fine. I have nothing really to say here either. Her being a woman was for diversity, but it works fine, so there isn’t actually an issue.
Xenk: In how he is played, he is great. Casting, however, is another story. He should have been white and, as mentioned in the article, should have been much more imposing. Russell Crowe or someone like him would have worked much better.
Doric: Like Holga, she needs an arc, but I have no huge problem with her character besides that. The casting might have been better, but it wasn’t abysmal. Her only scene that I actually despise is the “escape from the castle” sequence which is drawn out for far too long and forces her to make decisions and take shapes that are simply ludicrous.
Holga: This should have been a man. Period. Also, the character needs an arc of some kind. The Marlamin story should be cut entirely and the staff should be found another way.
Edgin: Casting was fine, but the way he was played was atrocious. He could have been a real linchpin in the group, but was turned into more of a charity case. He didn’t need to be a grizzled warrior like Xenk or uber-tough like the barbarian should have been, but he still needed to be masculine. His character needed to be charming, funny, quick-witted, and a good leader, which the film would have done fine with if it didn’t consistently undercut these attributes with Holga and Doric, who supplant moments and ideas that should have been Edgin’s, the insistence and that he is a bad father, and unnecessary and irrelevant flashbacks to events that serve only to emasculate him (e.g., the dragonfly scene). The movie really wants him to be incompetent. All this is purely from a story perspective, not mentioning the fast and loose attitude toward the source material in calling Edgin a bard, as the article talks about.
Simon: Simon. Oh, Simon. What is there to say about him that hasn’t already been said? I’ll be brief: he shouldn’t have been an effeminate loser.
Other problems I have, such as with the convenience of the Macguffins, and already stated in the article.
In short, the film wasn’t bad, but it could have been so much better with more competent writers and no wokeness.
Openendedd100
July 21, 2023 at 9:22 pm
As a long-time roleplayer and GM/DM.. this silliness and mcguffin stuff is precisely what should be expected of a D&D movie.
Yeah, some DM/GMs have serious games, but the vast majority of sessions and campaigns are full of hilarious moments and quick fixes by the GM/DM. Watching this movie through the lens of a roleplaying session behind the scenes is much more enjoyable. You just have to overlook the normal woke messaging.
Don
June 2, 2023 at 8:46 pm
Kane probably says it best. I’m on board with woke-ish, I agree with others that the forced diversity is the main wokeness. I didn’t feel guilty seeing this so I saw it a second time. Fell asleep but hey, not like the avengers with that “shes not alone”
Jimbo Bimbo
August 24, 2023 at 7:57 am
eh… It didn’t seem woke to me, which was a pleasant surprise the way people talk about it. There was one “Girl Boss” scene I saw at the start that was just plain funny, and nothing else IIRC, 55% is just too harsh. Did I just not pay enough attention to the movie?
Besides, DnD, the actual game would have strong girl characters alongside strong male characters if you played it with girls…
Evilgnome
January 15, 2024 at 5:57 am
Tbf I get the argument that somehow men are not 100 % amazing heros in this movie. But notice how 99.99 % of movies its literraly one female character who is the ONLY usless (apart from being blonde squeek) character in the movie.
Ngl many people are pleased solely because of that. This wokeness you guys complain in movies is what you get when you pretend other peopel dont exist long time enough. Also that’s why 2 random guys get to helm this movie cause men don’t need much experience but powerful men friends and a bro chance.
If movies where some sex is always one dimensional and stupid were ok I dont see how this is even comparable. In this movie the main guy has lots of going for him and the wizard is simpyl very young and clearly stuck but its not like they are dimnished to being decoration idiot (liek most women were forever). I would watch this many times over madmaxes marvels and other bull$h!t movies that spam the space like nothing and nobody else exist. IF I dont like diversity its only when they race swap character liek witcher otherwise you guys deserve this movement collectively.
Lane Johnson
April 4, 2024 at 6:48 pm
I know this is an older review, and I’m sure it was an honest typo, but when you have a minute to spare, please correct David Anderson to Dave Arneson. Thanks.