Dungeons & Dragons: A Player’s Delight and a Gateway Drug for Non-Players

By John Kirk

Rating: A

If there was anything missing from the lives of swords ‘n’ sorcery-loving nerds, it would be a proper Dungeons & Dragons movie.

Now we have one.

To the outsider’s perspective, D&D actually looks boring. You have a bunch of people sitting around a table with pencils, stacks of paper, books and oddly shaped dice (the correct descriptor is polyhedral, by the way). You are being told what to do by some person with a godlike disposition called a Dungeon Master.

Of course, that’s the classic perspective. Now, with internet applications, the stacks of paper have been replaced by laptops and though the dice remain a cool fixture of the game, now dice rolling can be done virtually. In fact, all the books can also be found online and instead of desperately thumbing pages to find some obscure rule, the power of the internet is now distilled into instant information gratification.

Some Dungeon Masters take pride in telling their stories by bringing in miniature figures and elaborate tabletop settings to help visualize the story that’s taking place. Because, of course, that’s all that D&D is: a shared and collaborative storytelling session in which the players — through role-playing their characters —respond to a presented setting and antagonists and other characters by the Dungeon Master.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves manages to present all of these aspects so well that you can see the D&D players in the audience actually miming the rolling of dice. At every encounter at my screening, audience members were shouting out rules or the names of creatures that appeared.

If there was a spell cast by the Wild Magic Sorcerer, Simon Aumar (Justice Smith) or a pep-talk by the Bard, Edgin Darvis (Chris Pine), you could hear the excited chatter in the theater as the nerds compared notes.

Because there is so much established world-creation in this game, it was entirely easy for directors Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daly to draw upon and create a viable scenario in which a party of adventurers assemble to overcome a mutual foe.

In this case, the aforementioned Bard and former agent of the Harpers (a clandestine organization dedicated to justice), Edgin Darvis and his Barbarian Warrior friend, Holga Kilgoe (Michelle Rodriguez) need to recover Darvis’ daughter from a former pair of associates who betrayed them.

They are joined by the druid shape-changer Doric (Sophia Lillis) and the sorcerer, Simon Aumar. These are the Rogue, Forge Fitzwilliam (Hugh Grant) and the Red Wizard, Sofina (Daisy Head) and they have usurped control of the local town. It’s up to the misfit adventurers to band together and stop them.

The entire cast does an excellent job, but to performers of their talent, this is an easy task. Like in the game, we expect the characters to have unique backgrounds, abilities, and an over-dramatic way of presenting themselves.

They have moments of backstories that they milk well for the audience who recognize that this is part of the game. But the comedy back-and-forth is also hilarious and shows that the cast don’t take themselves too seriously and allow themselves to have fun. Again, a very important aspect of the game.

A simple plot but it’s exactly the type of story that you find in a typical D&D adventure. But what makes it fun for the players is the dramatic presentation of the characters, the elaborate detail of their heroic deeds and of course, the comedic banter that always manages to shine through during these sessions. In short, it’s playing pretend but with dice. Of course, with the absence of the dice, that’s pretty much a movie.

D&D fans live in a world of fantasy and the objective of that fantasy is to make it as real as possible. A film like Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves brings that one step closer to them.

There’s a familiar dynamic of play present in the film which is picked up by the intended audience. In the film, the dialogue is filled with interaction and collaborative scheming. In fact, there are even sub-quests to achieve before they go after the final one. It just begs the question, why wasn’t this done earlier?

Films like Conan the Barbarian, Willow, Dragonslayer and similar films were D&D fans’ delights in the 1980s when the game was at its heyday. In fact, there was even a Dungeons & Dragons Saturday morning cartoon (which fans will be reminded of if they watch the film carefully). There was such a demand for this genre of films for players to watch and interpret through their rules. In fact, many of the characters in these films received Dungeons & Dragons character interpretations.

Of course, those films didn’t have the advantage of the modern CGI sorcery we have today. It’s very easy for films to create fantastic effects that completely realize magical effects or familiar creatures from the D&D menagerie.

In this film, it’s not just necessary for the story, it’s an expectation. Sure enough, the magic is rich, and the effects do not disappoint, as when we see the party fight a bizarre Gelatinous Cube or a ferocious and exotic monster like a Displacer Beast.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is a film that begs for a sequel. The intended audience will love it. But even if you are not a D&D player, the story and action are enough for you to have a good time. Who knows, maybe it’ll spark an interest in some to play a session in the future?

I know a good Dungeon Master.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. Directed by Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley. Starring Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Regé-Jean Page, Justice Smith, Sophia Lillis, Chloe Coleman, Daisy Head and Hugh Grant. In theatres March 31.