‘Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves’ rolls a mixed success

If you’ve been consuming popular culture in the past few years, it’s likely that the 1970s dice-rolling role-playing-game Dungeons & Dragons might be a familiar name. Dungeons & Dragons is no longer the domain of just the most dedicated fans. Instead, it’s moved from the fringes to something pretty mainstream. Dungeons & Dragons’ parent company, Wizards of the Coast, estimates that over 50 million people have played Dungeons & Dragons since its creation. 

The live-action movie version of the game, titled “Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” was released on March 31. Chris Pine, Hugh Grant, Michelle Rodriguez, and Regé-Jean Page are only a handful of the famous faces that battle their way through the fantasy-scape of Dungeons & Dragons. 

The movie is set in the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy world of the Forgotten Realms and begins with the charismatic bard Edgin Darvis and his barbarian friend Holga Kilgore, as they work to escape a prison. 

They were originally captured two years earlier after being double crossed in an attempt to steal some treasure, including an object that Edgin believed would bring his deceased wife back to life. He inadvertently caused her death years ago after botching a job as a thief. It was something he never fully recovered from, and he held the guilt for the rest of his life. 

After their escape, Edgin and Holga go to retrieve Edgin’s daughter, Kira, from one of their friends, Forge, who cared for her in their two-year absence. However, Forge had become the powerful Lord of Neverwinter and has spent this time turning Kira against Edgin.

Edgin is now forced to put together a band of adventurers to not only help him get his daughter back, but also once more find the one thing that will bring his wife back to life.

“Dungeons & Dragons” had a successful debut with its opening weekend ticket sales totaling to $37 million. The film has made back the cost of production. The estimated budget for “Dungeons & Dragons” was $150 million, and the movie has made over $180 million in worldwide sales at time of writing. 

With a current score of 90% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 7.6/10 on IMDB, the movie seems to be a hit among audiences. IGN called the movie “a fun-filled and wholly accessible fantasy adventure that leans into the spectacle and silliness of D&D campaigns.” 

For me, however, I couldn’t shake the feeling that this movie was missing something. 

To be fair, first and foremost there was a lot about it that was done incredibly well. The movie’s commitment to practical effects over CGI in various scenes was impressive. 

In one scene a character uses a “transmute rock” spell, turning a stone floor into quicksand. Instead of using CGI, tiles were placed on sand and air was pumped through, causing it to liquify. 

Die-hard Dungeons & Dragons fans will be excited to know that the famous city of Neverwinter makes an appearance, and large portions of the set were built instead of using CGI.  

Many of the fantasy species in the movie like dragonborn or aarakocra were done with puppets and motion-capture technology. 

In the age of overused — and often poorly done — CGI, it’s refreshing to look behind the scenes of a set and see that not everything is a green screen or a person in with styrofoam balls attached to a morph-suit. Even when CGI is utilized, it helps add to the broader story, making it interesting and visually rich in the same vein as the gorgeous illustrations that grace Dungeons & Dragons books. 

However, when I left the movie I found myself asking, “What sets this apart from other fantasy movies?”

Dungeons & Dragons occupies a really interesting space in the gaming world. It was among some of the earliest commercially-available tabletop role-playing games, and it’s a franchise defined by group dynamics and community-building skills. There’s a lot of creativity that goes into making a game up on the fly, and everything can come crumbling down with a good or bad dice roll. 

The community tabletop dynamic is an important aspect of the storytelling in the game. The movie, however, focused mostly on the fantasy aspect and ignored certain structures of gameplay. 

It did make some stylistic choices that honor the gameplay, like seemingly random and weird events that would result from a poorly thought out campaign in a game session.

But, players of the game understand that when something goes wrong at a key moment, the catalyst is a poor roll of the dice. With much of the gameplay aspect removed from the movie, it makes some “low roll” moments feel weird and poorly written. 

Though the movie sometimes does a good job of incorporating common in-jokes that can develop from the game – like characters named “Jarnathan” in an otherwise high fantasy setting – some choices did not mesh as well with the tone of the movie. 

The random, unpredictable events that were a part of the movie did not contribute to some of the tropes and endings. Since “Dungeons & Dragons” is a family movie, those familiar with the fantasy genre may very well find the ending and some of the twists to be very predictable. The final twist became obvious about halfway through the film. 

On one hand, I don’t think “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” lived up to its full potential. It didn’t take advantage of the unique narrative and collaborative opportunity that playing Dungeons & Dragons provides. On the other hand, it’s still a fun fantasy movie set in some of the more iconic locations in the Forgotten Realms and upholds many of the tropes and absolute nerdiness that comes with the game.