I decided to let this one stew for a bit before actually posting it. I'll go ahead and tell you: it's good. Is it good because we just have never had a good Dungeons & Dragons movie before or is it good on its own merits, though? Let's have a look.
As always with my fresh from the theater film reviews, spoilers follow after the cut. If you don't wish to be spoiled, go ahead and go see the movie (and I do recommend that you do!) and then come back here.
Alright. Everybody caught up? Good, then I'll begin.
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves tells the story of a bard by the name of Edgin Darvis (Chris Pine), who is a member of the faction known as the Harpers (big goody good for the sake of good types) whose wife is killed by a Red Wizard of Thay (basically the opposite of the Harpers in pretty much every way). Falling into a depression and needing to take care of his infant daughter Kira (later played by Chloe Coleman), Edgin teams up with the barbarian Holga Kilgore (Michelle Rodriguez), sorcerer Simon Aumar (Justice Smith), and rogue Forge Fitzwilliam (Hugh Grant).
Eventually, Forge's mysterious acquaintance and powerful wizard Sofina (Daisy Head) points them in the direction of a Tablet of Reawakening, something that could bring Edgin's wife back from the dead. Leaving Kira behind, the group goes out to raid a Harper stronghold, but end up getting caught. While Forge, Simon, and Sofina manage to escape, Edgin and Holga are captured and thrown into prison. Two years later, after a most amusing escape attempt (poor Jonathan!), the pair attempt to get back to their group to find that quite a few things have changed in their absence.
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| "Drizzt Do'Urden? What are you doing here?!" (No, there is no Drizzt cameo in this movie) |
Forge has become the Lord of Neverwinter with Sofina as his advisor, Kira has been Forge's ward and has been effectively turned against her father by Forge's lies, and Simon has been working as a conman, using his magic to steal from people who come to see his shows. Escaping from execution by Forge's men, Edgin and Holga seek out Simon and the druid Doric (Sophia Lillis) in order rescue Kira and to perform the heist to end all heists: namely stealing all of Forge's money out from under him during a festival at Neverwinter.
So, this movie is very, very firmly within the Forgotten Realms setting of the Dungeons & Dragons multiverse. As you can tell by the liberal use of parenthesis in the first paragraph (not for the actors, obviously), there's some definitely background to things going on. However, to the film's credit, they make the distinction very simple. The Harpers are obviously a good guy group and the Red Wizards are very obviously a bad guy group and general audiences won't need any more information beyond that in order to enjoy the movie.
...also, I'm looking forward to whoever pops up in the comments, my emails, or Twitter to tell me that "The Red Wizards aren't evil, bro!". Y'all are adorable, just adorable.
The main cast does pretty well on the whole. Justice Smith does well as the adorkable Simon, going through his arc to build and apply his self-confidence in multiple facets of his life (which has the best pay-off when he takes on Sofina in a duel). Being a battle-hardened barbarian is pretty much the role that Michelle Rodriguez exists to portray and she does it damn well. Hugh Grant manages to somehow maintain his characteristic wit and charm while also being an unbelievable bastard for pretty much the entire film. And, yes, Chris Pine actually does really well as Edgin.
I honestly don't dislike the man, I really don't. I just didn't like his Kirk in the Abrams Trek films and I really don't think his characterization in that film works. At all. Here, he does fine, although the only gripe I really have about him is that he's a bard that never actually does any magic.
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| "What's your Dexterity modifier again?" "Ah, crap..." |
You also may notice I didn't speak too much about Doric or Sofina. Doric is not a bad character by any means and, like the rest, has some very genuinely funny and also awesome moments (as you should in a team movie), but there really isn't much to her. The same goes for Sofina, the villain of the piece or at least the villain that we see the most of. Yes, Sofina is actually a secret Red Wizard of Thay and a servant of the lich Szass Tam (he's bad news, just go with it) and Daisy Head is definitely challenging her father, Buffy alumni Anthony Stewart Head, as she portrays a very sinister villain. However... that's all there is to her character. There is no depth, she's evil and serving someone evil by doing evil things.
The thing is, though? These aren't really bad. I'll get back to this in a minute.
Speaking of magic, the visualization of spells is done really well here. The effects look really good and the anyone who plays D&D would be able to pick out what certain spells are fairly easily even if they aren't spoken of by name (Bigby's Hand, Reverse Gravity, etc.). Even the concept of attuning to magic items as seen in Fifth Edition goes pretty much exactly how you would expect it to given the game mechanics. Of course, as with all things in narrative convenience, the power levels of the magic users involved is a little difficult to fully gauge, but it's honestly not something you need to dwell on too much.
Also, the creature designs are neat and translate well to the silver screen. The zombies - while comedic - were pretty ghastly and menacing in appearance, the gelatinous cube was something I'm honestly wondering why we haven't seen before, and me and my roommates were in stitches over the chonky dragon. So, between that and the magic, it's very clear that a lot of love went into making this movie reflect the source material (at least in appearance) as closely as possible.
As I said before, some of the characters don't have an overabundance of depth to them. Doric does have her backstory about being a tiefling taken in by wood elves and having prejudices against humans and Sofina is basically a stock evil wizard villain, so we aren't exactly going for the Marianas Trench of character motivation here, but we also don't necessary need it for the film to work. It's just one of the factors that makes the film seem like a more coherent version of a D&D campaign. Honestly, you can almost see the cutaways back to the table where the players get involved in hijinks and the DM gets exasperated and/or smirks as he throws them into yet another death trap situation.
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| "Okay, maybe I shouldn't do Star Trek 4..." |
The film has heart, it has humor, but not in the Marvel way where it clogs up a lot of the film. No, the humor does actually work within the framework of the world and the relationships between the characters, it's not just jokes for the sake of jokes (save for one Critical Role reference, and just... why?) and balances that humor well with the actual drama and serious moments. I honestly find that refreshing and something that works really, really well. Sure, the film isn't going to be sweeping the Oscars or anything like that, but yeah... it's good, and it's good on its own merits rather than just having to be compared to the previous three Dungeons & Dragons movies (yes, there were three, I'm sure I'll get to them on Reel Thoughts later).
Compared to the other D&D movies, particularly the first one, the film is basically Citizen Kane. All of the problems that the 2000 movie had, this addresses and fixes in detail. While Edgin is the main character and the main story thread is his, everyone gets a chance to shine and put their skills to use in their adventure and everyone has a degree of investment in saving the day. D&D is, after all, a game about playing as a team. While Sofina is more of a quiet menace, I'm far more able to take her seriously as a threat than I am Jeremy "I CAN USE EVERY OUNCE OF YOUR RAGE! UDUHDUHDUHDUH!" Irons as Profion (no offense to Jeremy Irons, he's great, but oh lord that portrayal!). The film absolutely stands on its own, don't misunderstand me, but it is wonderful to see that we've come so far!
In essence, though, the film is a popcorn movie and it hits pretty much every note it needs to in order to be a smashing success at that. It's not particularly sophisticated or deep and it really just doesn't need to be. It is, at its heart, what I believe D&D is at its best: A chance to step into another world for a time and become fully immersed in it for a few hours.
My recommendation? Go see this movie. Seriously, I'm not even kidding. I really want us to encourage this trend of adaptations actually being good outside of superhero comics, so get out there!
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| I'm not playing this one close to the chest. GO! |
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is now in theaters from Paramount Pictures and Entertainment One.
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